ONCOLOGIST SPEAKS : The enemy needs to be known so we can immediately attack

What you need to know:

  • This statement echoes in the corridors of not only the military barracks but also the wards and the research laboratories. One of the reason there is slow progress in cancer is that we are yet to understand cancer. The little knowledge available is also not equally distributed around the world.

An ancient and well celebrated Chinese military scholar Sun Tzu once wrote, “If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles. If you do not know your enemies but you know yourself, you will win one and lose one. If you do not know your enemies, you will be imperiled in every single battle.”

This statement echoes in the corridors of not only the military barracks but also the wards and the research laboratories. One of the reason there is slow progress in cancer is that we are yet to understand cancer. The little knowledge available is also not equally distributed around the world.

The current knowledge has helped doctors around the world to battle cancer through surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, hormonal therapy and the novel groundbreaking immunotherapy.

For the case of chemotherapy, cocktails of cytotoxic drugs are deployed to kill cancer. However, dissecting voices are heard based on two themes.

Foremost is that as the vials after vials of chemotherapy were being poured into the patients with an array of side effects that they present, the dissidents have always argued that this is not the only strategy against cancer.

This is backed by a belief that cancer cells hold unique qualities that lender them vulnerable to some chemicals that are not harmful to the normal human cells.

Secondly, it is argued that for a war against cancer to be won, the discovery strategy should be from the bottom to the top. The bottom strategy means to sit down and study the biology of the cancer cells and to learn its qualities. This strategy will enable treatments to be more specific and hence finally come up with the magic bullets.However, such path to the discovery of new therapies against cancer needs years of research and medical knowledge sharing.

In the past, a surgeon named Charles Huggins followed this path and discovered a new way to tame prostate cancer. Before this, one of the methods to treat the disease was the removal of the testacles that produced a hormone testosterone that drove the prostate cancer cells. Through his research on the biology of the cancer cells, he discovered that the castration could be done by just taking of pills, sparing many of the unnecessary knife. This was just the beginning, later there was discovery of tamoxifen for breast cancer that has for years improved the quality of many patients.

I will continue to emphasize the need for more research to learn more about cancer for us to develop less toxic drugs without compromising the potency. Reaching such a goal is possible through funding and gathering of data across the globe and sharing of this infomation.

For a country like Tanzania with meagre resources, the need to partake in research for cancer therapy is equally important. The decision is difficult but a very necessary one and will save lots of lives. Depending on the studies by our colleagues across the oceans will not save us because of the difference in biology of these cancers.

Research will provide insight into the biology of cancer cells and provide us with new windows to use new drugs that may have a chance to put breaks on the cancer and maybe even cure it. This enemy needs to be known and attacked now.