According to combined NCI, ACS and CDC report for 2016,
in US alone, 1.7 million new cancer cases and 0.6 million fatalities due to
cancer have been projected. Over past fifty years tremendous progress has been
made in treatment regimen challenging the concept of cancer being incurable.
Due to the advances in chemo and radiation therapy, diagnosis of cancer is notalways thought of as a death sentence. The 5-year survival rate has shown an
upward trend during this time (standing at 19% in 2012). But cancer has proven
complex, increasingly resistant and highly prone to relapse.
For the sake of
comparison, unlike AIDS, cancer doesn’t have a singular viral origin and unlike
Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s it is not restricted to biochemical manipulation
through one protein in one organ only. By no means do we want to infer thatother diseases are any less complex but cancer is quite heterogeneous at themolecular and cellular levels. Further, diversity in terms of causes, types,
organs affected, severity, and metastases has made it very difficult to combat
this disease (system). Therefore, an immediate need of drug development is
imperative that in turn requires extensive elucidation of the intricate
mechanisms of cancer progression. The unraveled targets thus could be used for
efficient anti-cancer drug design.
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