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The Human Cancer Situation
Published in Samuel C. Morris, Cancer Risk Assessment, 2020
A great deal of attention has been placed on cancer survival rates. Survival is the length of time between diagnosis and death and has been used primarily as a measure of effectiveness of treatment. All else being equal, introduction of a better treatment method should increase survival. The “war against cancer” has largely been directed to finding cures. As an operational definition, a person was considered cured if he survived 5 years. In the 1930s, the cure rate was 20%; in the 1940s, 25%; 1950-1970, 33%; 1976-1982, 50% (Hutter, 1988). The trend is encouraging, although overall survival rates are only a crude indicator. There are large differences in survival among different cancers; a shift in the incidence of the different cancers can affect the survival trend without changing the underlying phenomena.
Health effects and the post-1983 generation
Published in J. Mangano Joseph, Low-Level Radiation and Immune System Damage, 2018
Although babies born after the mid-1980s are still children, many have moved past infancy, and a child health profile is emerging. Any assessment of possible effects of radiation exposure on children must include cancer. In the Baby Boom years, cancer incidence could only be calculated by using Connecticut’s tumor registry. By the 1970s, however, national figures became available. When President Nixon declared the War on Cancer and Congress passed the National Cancer Act in 1971, one of the actions that ensued was the publication of an annual compilation of cancer incidence statistics. The calculations used data from five states (Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, New Mexico, and Utah) and four metropolitan areas (Atlanta, Detroit, San Francisco/ Oakland, and Seattle), each of which had an established cancer registry. These nine locations represent over 20 million Americans, or just under 10% of the population, making them a reasonably representative sample of the country. This new national cancer registry, run by the National Cancer Institute, is known as the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program.
Reflexive Co-Evolution and Governance Patterns
Published in Diana M. Bowman, Elen Stokes, Arie Rip, Embedding New Technologies into Society, 2017
The discourse now also permeates national and agency policy frameworks in EU Member States. The language used sometimes resembles that of a war to be fought, as earlier in the US ‘War on Cancer’ [46]. According to Daimer et al. the focus on Grand Challenges indicates a normative turn in innovation policies and the emergence of a new rationale for policy making: ‘orientation failure’ [47:222]. This phrasing refers to the notion of ‘market failure’, the dominant legitimation of pro-active technology and innovation policy since World War II. The idea of ‘market failure’ is that government intervention is only justified if the level and nature of R&D investments and activities on the basis of market mechanisms is sub-optimal. Increasingly, and since the 1990s supported by studies of innovation systems, governments have tried to improve the framework conditions for innovation [48]. There can be system failure, however, for example, when the innovation system shows structural deficits, such as poor interaction between different actors in the system. The next step now appears to be a concern about the direction of innovation, an orientation failure as it were.
Clinical translation of the assets of biomedical engineering – a retrospective analysis with looks to the future
Published in Expert Review of Medical Devices, 2019
Yijin Ren, Paul H. Fagette, Connie L. Hall, Herman Broers, David W. Grainger, Henny C. Van Der Mei, Henk J. Busscher
At the same time, pharmaceutical development faced new challenges. A growing emphasis on cancer research and treatment, beginning in earnest in the late 1960s, with the rise of the American Cancer Society lobby and USA President Nixon’s touted ‘War on Cancer’, saw the development of powerful new tools for research including genetic engineering for RNA replication and recombinant DNA. Monoclonal antibodies in conjunction with chemotherapy and radiation treatment allowed for individualized therapy in several cancer patients [34]. Major drug companies quickly assimilated all the latest imaging, computer, and polymerase chain reaction techniques into research and development pipelines. One appreciable success was the use of recombinant DNA to produce human insulin [35]. Another highly visible effort, led by the World Health Organization, resulted in the virtual elimination of smallpox by the end of the decade [36]. Other widely used drugs developed during this period, following the prevention and control approach, included statins [37] for cholesterol control and the equally important antihypertensive drugs [38].
Next-generation sequencing: from conventional applications to breakthrough genomic analyses and precision oncology
Published in Expert Review of Medical Devices, 2018
Demosthenes E. Ziogas, Ioannis D. Kyrochristos, Dimitrios H. Roukos
Overcoming therapeutic resistance, increasing the time to relapse, or even preventing recurrence in the adjuvant setting, in order to substantially prolong overall survival still remain unresolved problems. Researchers and clinicians share a common dream to achieve these goals in the war against cancer and the implementation of innovative NGS methods poses as a compelling and realistic future direction toward the realization of precision cancer medicine.
Mechanistic anticarcinogenic efficacy of phytofabricated gold nanoparticles on human lung adenocarcinoma cells
Published in Journal of Experimental Nanoscience, 2020
Sagadevan Suresh, Lakshmipathy Muthukrishnan, Selvaraj Vennila, Gurunathan K., Anita Lett J., Suriati Paiman, Mohammad Faruq, Hamad A. Al-Lohedan, Omid Akbarzadeh, Won Chun Oh
Globally, lung cancer remains to be the forerunner in causing tumour-associated mortality with an estimated death toll of 1.6 million per year [1]. The most common collective subtype NSCLC (non-small cell lung cancer) constitutes 85% of all lung cancer subjects, out of which approximately 50% can be histologically differentiated into lung adenocarcinoma (LAC) and the remaining 35% into lung squamous cell carcinoma [2]. Besides reports on various subtypes and genetic alterations that trigger lung cancer progression, the precise mechanisms involved remain unclear. Moreover, the responsiveness towards chemotherapeutic agents that have been in use for the effective treatment with the drugging of cancer cells remains modest [3]. This drugging approach besides its remarkable efficacy in bringing about tumour cell death, the cells tend to exhibit intrinsic or acquired resistance towards them [4–6]. In the war against cancer, various promising strategies have been put forth to overcome this challenge: prevention efforts, effective delivery, etc. But these strategies do not solve the purpose wherein a novel sophisticated theranostic therapy for improving the clinical outcome is the need of the hour. The conception of nanotechnology and its adoption in almost all domains of science and technology has opened the door to futuristic research. Manipulating the material to the tiniest scale has been the greatest exploration with enhanced mimicking of optoelectric and physicochemical properties varied nonchalantly from its bulk counterpart. The greatest challenge ever is to control size and stability for which research efforts are made on a broader scale encompassing biology, green chemistry and nanobiotechnology [7, 8] on a par with chemical methods in a more comprehensive and eco-friendly fashion [9]. In this mission, several antique metals have been used for various applications, in particular, the clinical and medicinal fields as antimicrobials, molecular imaging, diagnosis, targeted drug delivery and even as a cancer therapy [10–12]. The exploitation of microbes as nanofactories has been successful but the scalability was a challenge. Plants, on the other hand, were the most sought after for its rich phytochemical entities, cost-efficient, one-pot (single step), less toxic, waste minimisation and environmentally friendly qualities. This high-end machinery with bioactive enriched nanoarchitecture is on the verge of synthesising particles in a controlled manner.