In the NY Times there is a discussing the major advancements in medicine. Frankly it is in my opinion a rather shallow piece. The reality of medical advancement is that "tools" have evolved so that we can see deeper into such things as cancer.
For example, take prostate cancer. The dominant male, yes there are such things as males, cancer. Unlike breast cancer where dramatic advances have been made in overall survival, PCa is problematic. Most cases are relatively indolent. Yet others are highly aggressive. Why? No good answer.
I believe there are several issues that must be addressed before we get there. Unlike bench researchers whose knowledge of a specific area is deep, we need an integrating set of paradigms that allows for understanding extensive cellular disparity. Thus:
1. A Systems View: This means that for a true understanding we must know what is happening inside the cancer cell amongst all elements as well as the cancer cell environment. As an analog, some 100+ years ago we understood resistors, capacitor, inductors and vacuum tubes. Yet we had the barest understanding of radio no less TV and no less computers and even less software.
2. A Cell by Cell View: No cancer cells is necessarily the same as the others. They mutate continuously. Thus in examining cancers we must examine cell by cell. Not a mass of cells and not some histological view. We have some tools to do that. If we can find tumor cell surface proteins then we can develop such things as CAR NK cells and polyclonal antibodies to attack those cells, one at a time, leaving the healthy cells alone.
The list can go on. The problem is that funding and culture gets to focus on the bench people delving deeper into a specific issue. We need a parallel path to dig deep and equally to dig wide.
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