This essay provides a strategic plan for curing cancer. Regular updates are anticipated as
our understanding of cancer related networks increases and progress is made in the steps
below.
How to define victory in the war on cancer?
I define “curing cancer” as reducing American cancer deaths to 100,000 per year. Further
major reductions are unlikely, because some patients will be ineligible for curative treatment
due to coexisting medical conditions, some patients will refuse treatment and all of us will
eventually die of something.
What changes are needed to reduce cancer deaths to this level?
The first step in curative therapy is halting cancer cell growth, which involves several distinct
approaches.
1. Institute more effective treatment for the primary tumor.
1a. Develop more effective treatments to kill the cancer cells that damage critical
tissues and organs. Some patients need immediate treatment because their cancer is life
threatening due to its advanced and aggressive nature. This includes childhood leukemia
patients and some adult patients, such as actor Dustin Diamond, who died of disseminated
small cell lung cancer shortly after diagnosis. We should shift our focus from targeting driver
mutations (i.e. specific mutations common in a particular tumor) towards targeting
dysfunctional cellular networks which include the driver mutations. This is admittedly more
difficult, due to possible alterations in many genes in the network plus all of the components
with which the genes and their products interact (Barabási 2011).
1b. Curative treatment must attack different aspects of the cancer, requiring
combinations of combinations of treatment. Disabling any single cancer attribute, such
as rapid cell growth, will likely require combinations of 3-5 drugs or other treatments
(radiation therapy, hyperthermia) because each attribute develops through activation of a
web of biologic pathways that readily bypasses a single treatment block (Curing Cancer
Blog-Part 4).