The public need to stop expecting "cures" for cancer and recognise it can often be managed as a long-term disease, British experts say today.
A new survey shows that just 28% of people think that cancer can be controlled long-term – and just 26% believe there has been "major progress" against the disease.
This is in spite of the doubling of average survival time over the last decade, according to the Institute of Cancer Research, London.
Its survey also found scepticism about the prospects of cure within the next 50 years. Just 39% believed this was possible.
The Institute published a dossier of stories from cancer patients setting out how they have lived with the disease over many years.
It said average survival from the disease is now longer than ten years.
Its findings come from a poll of more than 2,000 people together with 355 cancer patients.
The research found a widespread lack of understanding of cancer drug resistance – 60% correctly understood it. About one in six people, including cancer patients, did not realise that the disease can come back after apparently successful treatment.
Patients include Chrissie Mortimer, aged 71, from Devon, diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukaemia ten years ago.
She said: “I never would have thought of cancer as something that can be managed, but it’s been 10 years since I was diagnosed, and I’d say I’m managing pretty well! I still work one day a week, and I now spend a lot of my time supporting a local refugee family – as well as doing lots of yoga. I am aware that I’m living with cancer, but it doesn’t stop me living my life.
"There’s still so much I want to do, and I hope that new treatments keep being discovered and developed.”
Dr Olivia Rossanese, head of biology in the new Centre for Cancer Drug Discovery, said: “By focusing overwhelmingly on cure, treatment has tended to be as aggressive as possible but in some patients there is a risk that that could drive cancer evolution, and the return of the disease in a more dangerous and less treatable form.
“We believe cancer should no longer be a case of ‘cure or nothing’. We know there’s a growing population of people who are living longer and better with cancer and that is something to celebrate. At the ICR, our aim is to discover many more anti-evolution treatments to overcome drug resistance, so we can not only cure a greater proportion of patients but also give others with advanced disease the chance of a much longer and better life.”
ICR chief executive Professor Paul Workman said: "Through our new Centre for Cancer Drug Discovery, we are aiming to find new ‘anti-evolution’ approaches to treatment that allow us to control even advanced cancers long term, as well as giving a growing proportion of patients the opportunity of a cure.
“We believe it’s vital that we can take the public on this journey with us, by understanding that cancer is a hugely complex and evolving disease, and that we need to move beyond the old, binary ‘cure or nothing’ thinking to find innovative new ways of treating the disease that can give people a longer and better life."
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