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Disease Introduction
The prevalence of cancer is rising. Approximately 700 million people are currently living with cancer but this number is expected to increase with 30% during the next two decades. As with many other noncommunicable diseases WHO anticipates that the low- and middle income countries will suffer most from this burden.
There are a number of known cancer risk factors, e.g. tobacco use, unhealthy diet and alcohol abuse, air pollution, chronic infections from hepatitis B (HBV), hepatitis C virus (HCV) and some types of Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) are but a few known risk factors.
Current diagnostics and treatments
Cancer is normally detected by various imaging methods and subsequently diagnosed based on histology examinations of tissue biopsies from the tumour. This analysis can reveal if the tumour is benign or malignant. Along with this information and the location of the tumour a diagnosis is defined.
The choice of systemic treatment is based on the diagnosis of the specific cancer cells that are to be treated. Chemotherapy, radiation therapy, surgery, immunotherapy, monoclonal antibody therapy are and other methods are the most commonly used treatment options. A more specific diagnosis will inevitably lead to better options for an individualised and targeted treatment.
Compared to the treatment of cancer in earlier phases palliative cancer treatment is more related to symptom management and not for curing the disease. Most of the palliative options are related to pain and breakthrough pain management.
Latest and future development
The current way of reasoning in the diagnosis of various types of cancer is related to the location of the tumours, e.g. lung, breast, colorectal, testicular cancer etc. New ways classifying different types of cancers have further increased the knowledge and is gradually is leading to the next level within cancer care, e.g. molecular imaging. Molecular imaging is expected to provide new ways of classifying tumours based on the molecular expression of each specific tumour and cancer cell.
There is also extensive development in the field of cancer immunotherapy towards immune-based tools for diagnosing and treating cancers, therapeutic cancer vaccines that target tumour antigens, monoclonal antibodies that can lead chemotherapy medications to tumours by binding with tumour cell antigens, adoptive transfer of “T cells” to recognise and attack cancer, vaccines to prevent infection by viruses that can cause cancer to mention a few relevant research areas.
Over the last decade, cancer drugs have become a major therapeutic category in which the competition is becoming increasingly fierce. In 1998, the global sales of the top 100 drugs amounted to $93 billion. A total of 8.9 billion came from ten cancer drugs. In 2009, however, the total top 100 drugs increased to $282 billion of which as much as $51 billion came from 20 cancer drugs.
