Science versus Evolution
The human body was not designed to fight cancer
A significant part of modern biophysical research is aimed at combating oncological diseases. Why can't the problem of cancer be solved as effectively as in the case of many other diseases? How important is international cooperation in this work? This was told to the correspondent of the project "Social Navigator" MIA "Russia Today" by the director of the Department of biophysics of the Helmholtz Center GSI (Germany) Marco Durante.
– Professor Durante, do you think science will soon defeat cancer?
– This is a very good question, but, unfortunately, there is no answer to it. Even US President Nixon once said that he was going to beat cancer within 10 years. And you see what the result is…
Scientists have found strategies aimed at combating cancer many times. But then it turned out that the cancer is not in a separate group of cells, but in biological tissue. Cancer is "smart", it finds different ways to spread.
Today, the method of immunotherapy seems very promising in the fight against cancer, but time will tell. Over the next ten years, we will understand whether it helps or not.
– What other scientific approaches, besides immunotherapy, will help in the treatment of cancer?
– Today there are three main approaches. The first is local therapy, which includes surgery and radiotherapy. The second approach is systemic therapy, which includes chemotherapy and hormone therapy. And the third approach is immunotherapy and targeted therapy.
Most patients today receive all three types of treatment. This combined approach turns out to be the most successful.
Of course, if we look at the mortality from cancer, it has not decreased significantly in Western countries. But if you look at the cases of cure, the statistics go up. These two facts are related to the fact that people's life expectancy is increasing.
Cancer is a disease of the elderly. In the old days, when a person died at the age of 40 from infections and other causes, there was almost no cancer problem. Today, many people die from cancer simply because they live longer.
That is why it is so difficult to beat cancer: from an evolutionary point of view, we are not programmed to fight this disease, since we were programmed to die at a younger age. Well, since we have begun to live longer, we will have to solve the problem of oncological diseases.
– How do you assess the contribution of Russian scientists to the fight against cancer?
– I want to state with all certainty: they have made a very great contribution to this field of science. In particular, Russian nuclear physicists have done a lot for the development of modern particle beam therapy.
The problem, as I see it, is that Russian scientists lack information about the research of foreign colleagues, and we mutually lack communication with each other. The level of scientific research in Russia is actually very high. And foreign colleagues often do not know about this, since they cannot read publications in Russian. We only know about the existence of Russian scientific groups and centers, but we do not know about the results of their work.
Russian scientists need to publish more in international scientific journals and attend international conferences. This problem needs to be solved, we need to work more together.
I would like to note the high level of training of students in Russia. There are many Russian students working in my laboratory in Germany, including from MEPhI, and they are much stronger than their German peers.
In general, in my opinion, MEPhI is moving in a very right direction, developing scientific research in contact with foreign colleagues. As far as I know, this university has set itself the goal of becoming one of the most advanced universities in international rankings. This is a very ambitious task, and the development of international cooperation should help in achieving it. The interview is presented within the framework of the III International Symposium "Engineering and Physical Technologies of Biomedicine", organized by the National Research Nuclear University "MEPhI" (NRU MEPhI).
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