Cancer is no longer the tragic disease it once was, but a common disease that can strike anyone. Advances in anti-cancer drugs are rapid, and treatments are being developed that effectively inhibit cancer cells with fewer side effects on normal cells, making cancer a manageable disease that is no longer fatal.
“It’s cancer.” The heroine has leukemia. The heroine thinks. “Why me?” But in the modern world, cancer is no longer a disease that ‘just happens’. The fear and worry of cancer has become a familiar reality for everyone. What makes it even more unnerving is the fact that it is not a disease that affects only certain people, but something that we can all face. According to statistics from South Korea’s Ministry of Health and Welfare, if South Koreans survive to the average life expectancy (81 years), they have a 36.4% chance of developing cancer, with an estimated two out of five (37.6%) men (77 years) and one out of three (33.3%) women (84 years) developing cancer. Cancer is now a common disease that can strike anyone, not just the heroine of a tragedy.
Cancer is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Infectious diseases, such as the common cold or an eye infection, can usually be cured naturally by the body’s police-like immune cells recognizing and destroying the bacteria or viruses that cause the illness. Thanks to the immune system’s ability to do its job, most infectious diseases can be recovered without our direct help. However, this is not the case with cancer. Because cancer cells are the result of the accumulation of mutations in normal cells, they look similar to normal cells, which allows them to escape the patrols of immune cells. Although they have lost the ability to perform their core functions, cancer cells are able to evade the immune system and continue to divide, preventing other normal cells from functioning. Therefore, if we are to fight cancer like a loose colt, we need a special weapon to take the place of our immune system. The special weapon that mankind has discovered is anticancer drugs.
The origins of anticancer drugs date back to the early 20th century, during World War II, when the Germans began using sulfur mustard, or “mustard gas,” as a biochemical weapon because the invention of gas masks by the opposing side rendered traditional poison gas attacks ineffective. Mustard gas is a very potent poisonous gas that, when exposed, can cause mild blistering of the skin and mucous membranes, nausea, and even blindness. The use of mustard gas as a weapon of war and the resulting casualties prompted the U.S. military to undertake a major medical investigation of patients exposed to mustard gas. In the process, various biochemical properties of mustard gas were identified, including the unexpected discovery that mustard gas has anti-cancer properties. A poisonous gas developed to effectively slaughter humans became the precursor to anticancer drugs, which inhibit the overgrowth of cancer cells and help prolong human life.
But sulfa mustard is a way to kill real sheep, not just wolves in sheep’s clothing. Cancer spreads throughout the body by dividing at a much faster rate than normal cells, and sulfa mustard has the ability to inhibit cell division, which stops cancer cells from growing. However, because it inhibits all cell division at once, it affects not only cancer cells, but also the division of normal cells. Therefore, sulfa mustard treatment has the side effect of impairing the function of skin, stomach lining, hair, and immune cells that normally divide actively. This is why chemotherapy can cause hair loss and vomiting.
Patients who suffer from these side effects report that they find chemotherapy as painful as the cancer itself, but at the time, it was the best option to save their lives, so many patients had no choice but to undergo chemotherapy, risking hair loss, vomiting, and even infections due to a compromised immune system. Of course, it’s better to endure hair loss and vomiting than to give up your life, so at the time, these drugs were given even with serious side effects. However, as life-threatening infectious diseases have been conquered by a variety of antibiotics, antivirals, and vaccines, and cancer has become one of the most serious diseases that threaten human life more than any other, the need for effective cancer treatments with fewer side effects has increased. To this end, a new class of anticancer drugs has emerged that can distinguish between normal cells and cancer and destroy only cancer cells. These are also called targeted anticancer drugs because they selectively inhibit the division of cancer cells, excluding normal cells, by recognizing features that only appear in cancer cells, and many anticancer drugs used in recent years are of this type.
A typical example of a targeted cancer drug is an angiogenesis inhibitor. As we explained earlier, cancer cells divide at a very high rate and require more nutrients than normal cells. To do this, they signal new blood vessels to form near them, so that they can take advantage of the nutrients in the blood. Angiogenesis inhibitors are anti-cancer drugs that interfere with this process. They don’t attack the cancer cells directly, but rather interfere with the creation of the blood vessels that provide nutrients to the cancer cells, preventing them from growing further by starving them without feeding them. Starting with the discovery of an angiogenesis inhibitor called endostatin by O’Reilly’s research team in 1997, many angiogenesis inhibitors have been developed and are being used or are on the verge of commercialization, from avastin, which is widely used for colon cancer, to DWM-M01A and DWM-M01S developed in Korea.
‘Cancer’ is probably the most frightening disease for modern people. There is a perception that cancer is a disease that will kill you. However, the situation is not as bad as it seems. Cancer research and treatments are advancing faster than ever before, especially in the last few years, with many innovative treatments being developed. Cancer is no longer seen as a fatal disease, but rather as a chronic condition that can be treated and managed. The history of anticancer drugs is less than 100 years old. In this short period of time, the field has come a long way, and there are now so many good treatments available that the chances of surviving cancer within five years of starting treatment are increasing every year. As research continues around the world to understand how cancer develops and to develop effective anti-cancer drugs, we can dream of a world without cancer.
