Cancer research over the world..

 

What is Cancer?

Cancer is a large group of diseases that can start in almost any organ or tissue of the body when abnormal cells grow uncontrollably, go beyond their usual areas to invade adjoining parts of the body or spread to other organs. It is a disease in which some of the body's cells grow uncontrollably and spread to other parts of the body. Cancer can start almost anywhere in the human body, which is made up of trillions of cells. Sometimes tumar can be the first appearence of cancer. Causes of tumar is Defective P53 protin.

Symptoms were names after the crab because the finger-like spreading projections from a cancer called to mind the shape of a crab. Later Roman physician, Celsus translated the Greek term into cancer, the Latin word for crab.

Cancer is caused by changes (mutations) to the DNA (De-oxyribo Nuclic Acid) within cells. The DNA inside a cell is packaged into a large number of individual genes, each of which contains a set of instructions telling the cell what functions to perform, as well as how to grow and divide.

4 principal types of Cancer:

• Carcinomas-- It begins in the skin or the tissue that covers the surface of internal organs and glands. 
• Sarcomas-- It begins in the tissues that support and connect the body. 
• Leukemias-- This is a cancer of the blood. 
• Lymphomas

Biggest cause of Cancer!!

The basic cause of sporadic (non-familial) cancers is DNA damage and genomic instability. A minority of cancers are due to inherited genetic mutations. Most cancers are related to environmental, lifestyle, or behavioral exposures.

Cancer treatment updates!

Any cancer treatment can be used as a primary treatment, but the most common primary cancer treatment for the most common types of cancer is surgery. If your cancer is particularly sensitive to radiation therapy or chemotherapy, you may receive one of those therapies as your primary treatment.

CAR T cell therapy, immune checkpoint inhibitors, monoclonal antibodies, treatment vaccines, and immune system modulators. Targeted immunotherapies are showing great promise for multiple types of cancer.

Doxorubicin is considered one of the strongest chemotherapy drugs for breast cancer ever invented. It can kill cancer cells at every point in their life cycle, and it's used to treat a wide variety of cancers, not just breast cancer. Doxorubicin is also known as “The Red Devil” because it is a clear bright red color. 

Common Types of Cancer Treatment

• Surgery: An operation where doctors cut out tissue with cancer cells.
• Chemotherapy: Special medicines that shrink or kill cancer cells.
• Radiation therapy: Using high-energy rays (similar to X-rays) to kill cancer cells.

However, Experimental Cancer Therapy Shows Success in More Than 70 Percent of Patients in Global Clinical Trials.

NCI(National Cancer Institute) Research: Cancer Grand Challenges announces global research funding opportunity with nine new challenges

The research initiative aims to inspire bold new ideas that have the greatest potential for advancing cancer research and improving outcomes for people affected by cancer. The new round of challenges, announced March 8, 2023, during the Cancer Grand Challenges Annual Scientific Summit in London, is open until June 22, 2023.

“This partnership with Cancer Research UK underscores our commitment to support the brightest minds across the global research community as they tackle some of the most complex challenges in cancer research,” said Monica M. Bertagnolli, M.D., director of NCI. “We look forward to the compelling research ideas that emerge from this new set of challenges.”

International, interdisciplinary teams are invited to submit their approaches to address one of the nine challenges. In 2024, up to four winning teams will be awarded about $25 million each over five years to complete their research.

“These challenges are exciting opportunities to accelerate the pace of cancer science, and we invite teams to propose creative and novel approaches to tackle these challenges,” said Dinah S. Singer, Ph.D., NCI deputy director for scientific strategy and development. “By stimulating bold and interdisciplinary research led by diverse teams, we hope to improve outcomes and provide more options for the millions affected by cancer in the United States, the United Kingdom, and around the globe.”

In prior years, seven other interdisciplinary projects were also funded through earlier rounds of the Cancer Grand Challenges.

“Cancer is a major global problem that requires global collaboration. Cancer Grand Challenges provides an unparalleled opportunity for the world’s scientific community to come together and make change,” said David Scott, Ph.D., director of Cancer Grand Challenges, Cancer Research UK. “Our initiative inspires new thinking—bringing together world-class, multidisciplinary teams to find bold, new solutions to cancer’s most complex problems. These are an ambitious set of challenges, but with investment at this scale, we can drive the progress against cancer that the world urgently needs.”

The nine new challenges are as follows:

Solid tumors in children: Develop therapeutics to target oncogenic drivers of solid tumors in children

• This challenge seeks to identify new therapies that target drivers of solid tumors in children, to improve survival and reduce the lifelong side effects caused by existing treatments.

Cancer inequities: Understand the mechanisms through which genetics, biology, and social determinants affect cancer risk and outcomes in diverse populations, to motivate interventions to reduce cancer inequities

• This challenge seeks to understand the relative contributions of genetics, biology, and social drivers on cancer causes to provide foundational knowledge that could be used to develop novel approaches to reduce cancer inequities and disparities.

Obesity, physical activity, and cancer: Determine the mechanisms through which obesity and physical activity influence cancer risk

• This challenge seeks to understand the biological processes by which obesity and physical activity impact cancer risk to better inform the development of interventions to alter risk.

Aging and cancer: Decipher the functional basis underlying the association between aging somatic tissues and cancer

• This challenge seeks to understand how the molecular changes associated with aging contribute to cancer risk in different organs. This knowledge could be used to develop new targeted interventions to lower cancer risk in aging populations.

T-cell receptors: Decipher the T-cell receptor cancer-recognition code

• This challenge aims to improve our understanding of how T cells, a type of immune cell, recognize cancer cells, to improve and broaden the success of cancer immunotherapies.

Early-onset cancers: Determine why the incidence of early-onset cancers in adults is rising globally

• This challenge aims to understand the mechanisms underpinning the biological and environmental factors behind the rise in early-onset cancers, diagnosed in adults under 50 years of age, so that this knowledge can be used to ultimately develop interventions to protect populations at risk.

Cancer cell plasticity: Understand cancer cell plasticity and its contribution to the development of pan-therapeutic resistance in cancer

• This challenge seeks to expand our understanding of how cancer cells can change their identity by adopting the characteristics of different cells, which can contribute to cancer progression and therapy resistance, and how this could be regulated to improve the effectiveness of cancer therapies.  

Retrotransposable elements: Understand the roles of retrotransposable elements in cancer

• This challenge seeks to understand how retrotransposable elements (parts of our DNA that come from viruses that infected us millions of years ago and can jump to different locations in our DNA) contribute to the development and progression of certain types of cancers.

Chemotherapy-induced neurotoxicities: Understand and prevent chemotherapy-induced neurotoxicity and neuropathy

• This challenge seeks to better understand how some chemotherapies cause particular side effects, such as long-term damage to the nervous system, ultimately to better inform approaches to prevent and treat these to improve patients’ quality of life.

These nine challenges were chosen from more than 300 ideas generated through international workshops and open invitations for ideas from the cancer research community and people affected by cancer. Of these, the most compelling ideas were evaluated by experts in cancer research. The experts provided their recommendations to Cancer Research UK. As funding partners, NCI and Cancer Research UK made the final selections for the Cancer Grand Challenges.