promising treatment against melanoma and kidney cancers

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-05-woman-cancer-highlights-treatment.html

this is excellent progress in immunotherapy! BUT, it doesn't currently work well against the more common caners that are better at hiding from the immune system and therefore the immunotherapy. Now, if only they can just find a way to unhide all the more common cancers from this immunotherapy ....

I don't know which kind of cancer treatment will pan out in the long run but, with so much promising news on cancer research recently, I think it probably won't be many (can't define how many is 'many' ) years now before ~99% of all cancer cases will be easily cured without nasty side effects.
Is anyone else here getting this same general optimistic impression?

Yet another promising bit of cancer research:

http://phys.org/news/2014-05-method-drugs-cancer-cells-triggering.html

yet more promising cancer research; this time, using nanoparticles to introduce siRNA into cancer cells to silence rouge genes. It has already been shown to have a definite effect on mice tumors slowing down their growth and reducing their spread..

http://phys.org/news/2014-05-rna-nanoparticles-silence-genes-deployed.html

Originally posted by humy
yet more promising cancer research; this time, using nanoparticles to introduce siRNA into cancer cells to silence rouge genes. It has already been shown to have a definite effect on mice tumors slowing down their growth and reducing their spread..

http://phys.org/news/2014-05-rna-nanoparticles-silence-genes-deployed.html

Won't it be a great day when cancer can be put on a back burner and treated like the flu?

Originally posted by sonhouse
Won't it be a great day when cancer can be put on a back burner and treated like the flu?

Yes, wouldn't it! Just imagine it; you learn you got a malignant tumor and yet that doesn't worry you at all! You just go to a doctor who gives you a few pills or gives you a jab of something and, within a few days, all the cancer is gone and you haven't been sick and your hair hasn't fallen out! -this is what I think is coming!

http://phys.org/news/2014-05-surface-tech-light-based-cancer-treatment.html

interesting that near infrared can be used to indirectly kill cancer this way.
But how is this for a similar idea; use microwaves that somehow activate a drug. Not sure how you could design a drug to absorb microwaves and be chemically activated by microwaves but, if that can be made to work, the microwaves should reach even the deepest tumors and you could get the microwave to selectively shine on the tumors thus avoid much of the side effects.
Another similar idea is to have an X-ray activated drug that is only activated where there is high intensity X-rays where the X-rays are being focused but stay inactive and therefore none toxic where it is exposed to low levels or X-rays or no X-rays.

Originally posted by humy
http://phys.org/news/2014-05-surface-tech-light-based-cancer-treatment.html

interesting that near infrared can be used to indirectly kill cancer this way.
But how is this for a similar idea; use microwaves that somehow activate a drug. Not sure how you could design a drug to absorb microwaves and be chemically activated by microwaves but, if that can be mad ...[text shortened]... stay inactive and therefore none toxic where it is exposed to low levels or X-rays or no X-rays.

It would be interesting if a better wavelength could be used, I am thinking of Thz radiation. They already use them to scan for hidden weapons at airports so we know they penetrate all through the body.

The thing that would make Thz radiation good for cancer treatment is the fact the wavelength is MUCH smaller than microwaves and is still non-ionizing kind of radiation.

That means smaller antenna arrays, for instance, 300 mhz, 1 meter wavelength so an efficient antenna needs to be 1/2 meter or 50 cm wide to transmit. So 3000 mhz, 0.1 meter, antenna 5 cm wide.

But Thz, 300,000 mhz ish wavelength, 1 millimeter. Antenna 1/2 mm or 500 microns! And even shorter than that, 3 million Mhz, (3Thz) 100 micron wavelength, which is the low frequency end of IR.

See the difference here in localizing the radiation to a specific part of the body?

The trick then would be to have drugs that can activate under the influence of Thz radiation at a specific spot in the body but that method could kill much smaller tumors because of the smaller beam size.

IR and such has even shorter wavelengths but don't penetrate as well into flesh so higher powers would be needed and then of course you risk internal burns if it took too much power, which I have no idea what power levels they use so don't know if that would be a problem.

I just found this:

http://phys.org/news/2014-05-surface-tech-light-based-cancer-treatment.html

Yet another incremental but significant potential advance in cancer treatment;

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-05-scientists-potential-cancer-immunotherapy.html

This is a peptide antibody that shuts down myeloid-derived suppressor cells that normally prevent the human immune system from attacking the cancer in response to a cancer vaccine. There should be few side effects from this peptide and it should greatly enhance the effect of cancer vaccines when given with the vaccines.

There are so many types of treatment being researched that I have no idea which type treatment will eventually pan out but with all these resent incremental but significant advances, surely it won't be long now before truly reliable and effective cancer treatments are invented that have few side effects?

I have also noticed there seems to also been a lot of recent incremental improvements of understanding the biology of cancer ( such as the latest one: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-05-trigger-cancer-cells.html ) and this could obviously lead to new drug targets and greatly speed up research into better treatments.