Cell division allows us as organisms to grow, to adapt, to recover, to repair and live. And distorted and unleashed, it allows cancer cells to grow, to flourish, to adapt, to recover and to repair – to live at the cost of our living cancer cells grow faster, adapt better. They are more perfect versions of ourselves. The difficulty in distinguishing between normal and malignant cells has limited the efficacy of every therapy advanced for cancer. The adaptability of cancer cells lies at the heart of the problem of drug resistance.
Cancer is built into our genomes: the genes that unmoor normal cell division are not foreign to our bodies, but rather mutated distorted versions of the very genes that perform vital cellular functions. And cancer is imprinted in our society: as we extend our life span as a species, we inevitably unleash malignant cell growth. If we seek immortality, then so, too, in a rather perverse sense, does the cancer cell. Will science enable future generation to win the war on cancer?
No comments:
Post a Comment