It’s 2020 and science continues on its ever-steady march of progress.

Many great scientific feats were accomplished in the past decade, ranging from the discovery of water on Mars to the creation of a hamburger in a laboratory.

Yet, a cure to cancer remains to be seen, a reality made more tragic on World Cancer Day today.

Despite billions of dollars poured into cancer research, the disease continues to affect more than 17 million people and their loved ones today.

Cancer occurs when normal cells mutate and reproduce without control.

As part of a defence mechanism, cells that are damaged or mutated will either attempt to repair themselves or self-destruct.

However, some mutations allow cancerous cells to bypass this defence and these cells proceed to invade surrounding tissues or travel to other parts of the body.

Once cancer has spread long enough, it becomes close to impossible to cure.

Cancer is complicated, with hundreds of different variants that cannot be dealt with one cure.

A majority of cancers are treated with a mix of tumour-removal surgery and radiation therapy to kill any remnants of the cancer cells.

Some patients undergo hormone therapies, immunotherapy and treatments targeted at specific cancers.

Most of the time, cancer patients will be free of the disease and they can go on to live long and happy lives.

Other times though, the cancer remains and treatments fail to do anything to dislodge it.

Researchers have long worked hard to find cures for all cancers and have noted several issues that will have to be dealt with along the way.

The first being the need for improved methods of studying cancer while it’s still inside a living organism. A majority of treatments are found through study of cancer cells in labs.

While the information scientists have garnered from them is invaluable, there is a need to understand a tumour’s complexities inside a person’s body.

Drugs that kill cancer cells in labs may not work on cancer cells inside people. Some tumours aggressively spread and mutate quickly.

A single tumour could have different parts consisting of cancer cells with their own distinct mutations.

This makes treatment difficult when drugs are capable of killing a part of the tumour but not the rest of it.

Tumours are also capable of operating as its own ecosystem inside the body, with cancer cells communicating with each other and with nearby non-cancerous cells.

Normal cells are manipulated to form blood vessels that feed the tumour and remove its waste products.

The tumour also ensures its survival by suppressing the immune system, keeping itself safe from detection and destruction.

Researchers are looking into ways to prevent tumours from manipulating healthy cells into doing their will. Increasing evidence also proposes that cancer stem cells need to be dealt with quickly and efficiently.

While rare, cancer stem cells are resistant to many treatments and a single survivor can cause cancer recurrence in a previously cured patient. Learning to deal with these obstinate cells will aid in curing patients permanently.

As though researchers don’t already have a lot on their plate, cancer cells are constantly evolving to stay alive.

Cancer cells can learn quickly and may eventually become resistant to treatments that were once effective. To destroy them, treatments must be able to change just as the cancer cells do.

But while a cure-all for cancer is not within humanity’s grasp yet, progress is most certainly being made.

The chances of survival for cancer patients has been increasing with each passing year as the success rates of treatment increases.

Every passing day brings science closer to the inevitable breakthrough.

With every piece of new knowledge humanity gains, hopefully it will be yet another nail in the coffin of cancer.