It is. There are a ridiculously large number of cancers and they are all different. Even something seemingly simple like "lung cancer" can be divided into several high level diseases, each of which have their own subcategories.
People who expect a one size fits all solution to cancer will be sorely mistaken
“We believe that loss of the apical PLEKHA7-microprocessor complex is an early and somewhat universal event in cancer,” he adds. “In the vast majority of human tumor samples we examined, this apical structure is absent"
I'm not saying you're wrong, but this seems to be suggesting that treatments based on this mechanism could potentially be used to treat the vast majority of cancers. You're saying this is wrong?
Sure, and they might be right. But history is rich with these sorts of things. The number of common cancer attributes are legion, e.g. MYC mutations, but to date it always turns out that the total story is complex enough that it doesn't matter.
Cancer is a type or classification of diseases. There are many cancerous diseases. It could very well be that they're related, but we shouldn't assume that unless proven. However, looking for similarities and patterns is a good thing nonetheless.
The classification of "being a cancer" does imply (rightly) that there are similarities. The question is if this helps us in treating the cause or not.
I feel that perhaps saying "cancerous diseases" is clearer than saying "cancers".
I'm an absolute layman, so I'm more curious here whether I am wrong: So far I've always understood that, however different a cancer may develop, all kinds of cancers have roughly the same cause: Some event corrupts a cell's DNA such that:
a) The corruption cannot be repaired;
b) The cell still survives;
c) The mechanisms that normally regulate cell division are impaired, causing the cell to continually divide.
d) The daughter cells also have DNA corruptions with the same properties.
Of course, depending on the nature of the DNA corruption and on what cells were corrupted, the resulting illnesses may be vastly different, as well as the strategies to combat them. But couldn't you at least look for ways to prevent cancer universally if you somehow address this common cause?
The thing is, your given (some event corrupts the cell's DNA) needs to be examined. Let's agree that some event corrupts the cell's DNA as you suggest, and then follow up with some questions.
1) Where in the enormous strand was it corrupted?
1a) Was it one place, or several?
2) What corrupted it?
2a) Again, was it one cause, or five different causes,
three of which we don't know about and can't currently track?
3) Does the mechanism of action (the thing that caused the mutation) change the way a specific pathology progresses, even if it's a similar mutation in the same area? (yes)
So that's sort of the problem with cancer research. They're not trying to solve a single problem with a bunch of different presentations, they're trying to solve a fuckton of problems with a similar number of presentations, some of which are similar even though they have different roots.
>I feel that perhaps saying "cancerous diseases" is clearer than saying "cancers".
I would argue that it's not. People use 'cancerous' as an adjective describing things that aren't cancer all the time. Of course, if you're only using 'cancerous' to refer to cancers (I.e., in the context of pathology,) then just call them cancers.
Yeah, it feels like they're not different diseases at all, merely different dialects of the same disease (my words, a tad hand-wavey). I understand the need to be precise about the wording and the willingness to not let people get their hopes up too much, but I feel that this "a bunch of different diseases" concept is introducing a whole slew of misconceptions in the mix as well.
Cancer is one disease like infectious disease is one disease. Some things we thought were different are now seen as similar (BRAF V600E, for example), but the genes and proteins involved are usually radically different, one to the next. If anything, it's striking that our morphological classifications have withstood genetic scrutiny at all.
Except that infectious diseases have innumerable, dissonant final effects on the body. Cancers all basically do the same thing to different parts of the body. Which is why the notion of cutting the symptom (uncontrolled, mutated, undying cells) can be considered.
In my world, cancer is simply a cell, or group of cells, which lives inside the human body, that the human body treats as part of itself. But these cells are more interested in their own survival than the survival of the body. It's when a group of cells "dissent", so to speak, and start prioritizing themselves over the rest of the cells in the body.
I fell like Cancer is an umbrella term for several different little monsters.