Question: why do you have such an interest in finding a cure for cancer?

Chris Kettle answered on 12 Jun 2012:

Cancer is a horrible disease. No parent should have to be told that their child has cancer. My mother died of lymphoma so it has a personal interest for me. How soon we will cure it is unknown but i bet that within your lifetime cancer will become a treatable condition and will not be fatal in the majority of cases. We are sooooo close to understanding how each cancer works and once each cancer is understaood it can be treated.

Plus, cancer treatment is big business for the pharmaceutiucal industries. Thats why quite a lot of the main types of cancer can be treated effectively now.

In future, the treatment of cancer will depend on the patient and NOT the disease – sound strange? At the minute cancer is treated depending on the disease. If you have cancer X yoiu get treatment Y. But, treatment Y doesn’t work in all people, and sometimes is more toxic than the cancer. Research is going on into personalised medicine which will show how a patient will behave for a particular drug – this way each patient can be given the best treatment for them and not just a one shoe fits all drug.