In this blog post, we will look at how the development of anticancer drugs has progressed and whether it is changing cancer from an incurable disease to a treatable one.
“It’s cancer.” The tragic heroine has leukemia. The heroine thinks, ‘Why me?’ But in modern society, cancer is not a disease that ‘just happens’ to anyone. The fear and worry of cancer has become a familiar reality for everyone. The fact that this disease does not only affect certain people but that we all face it makes us even more anxious. According to statistics from the Ministry of Health and Welfare in Korea, if Korean people live to the average life expectancy (81 years), the probability of getting cancer is 36.4%. It is estimated that two out of five men (77 years) (37.6%) and one out of three women (84 years) (33.3%) will develop cancer. Now, cancer has become a common disease that can affect anyone, not just the heroine in a tragedy.
Cancer is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Infectious diseases such as the common cold or eye disease can be cured naturally by the immune cells, which are like the police of our bodies, recognizing and destroying the bacteria or viruses that cause the disease. In most cases, infectious diseases can be recovered without direct help thanks to the immune system’s ability to perform its role. However, this is not the case with cancer. However, since cancer cells are formed by the accumulation of mutations in normal cells, they look similar to normal cells and can avoid being patrolled by immune cells. Cancer cells have lost the ability to perform their core functions, but they are able to evade the immune system and constantly divide, preventing other normal cells from functioning. Therefore, in order to fight cancer, which is like a runaway colt, we need a special weapon to replace our immune system. The special weapon that humanity has discovered is an anticancer drug.
The origins of anticancer drugs date back to the early 20th century, when World War II was in full swing. At the time, the German army began using sulfur mustard, also known as “mustard gas,” as a biochemical weapon that could attack exposed skin after the invention of gas masks by the opposing forces rendered conventional poison gas attacks ineffective. Mustard gas is a very powerful poison gas that, when exposed, can cause everything from blisters and mucosal swelling to blindness. As the highly toxic mustard gas was used as a weapon in war and casualties were frequent, the American camp launched a major medical investigation of patients exposed to mustard gas. In the process, the various biochemical characteristics of mustard gas were identified, and unexpectedly, it was also discovered that mustard gas had an anti-cancer effect. A poison gas developed to effectively kill people became the beginning of an anti-cancer drug that helps to extend human life by suppressing the excessive proliferation of cancer cells.
However, sulfa mustard is a method of killing not only wolves in sheep’s clothing but also real sheep. Cancer cells divide at a much faster rate than normal cells and spread throughout the body, but sulfa mustard has the ability to inhibit cell division, which can prevent cancer cells from growing. However, this method of inhibiting all cell division at once affects the division process of not only cancer cells but also normal cells. Therefore, taking sulfa mustard has side effects that inhibit the function of skin, stomach lining, hair, and immune cells that actively divide in normal conditions. This is why chemotherapy causes hair loss and vomiting.
Patients who experience these side effects complain about the pain of chemotherapy as much as the cancer itself. However, at the time, it was the best option for saving lives, so many patients had no choice but to undergo chemotherapy, even at the risk of hair loss, vomiting, and even infection due to a weakened immune system. Of course, it was better to endure hair loss and vomiting than to give up on life, so at the time, there was no choice but to take these anticancer drugs at the risk of serious side effects. However, as life-threatening infectious diseases have been conquered by various antibiotics, antiviral drugs, and vaccines, and cancer has become one of the most serious diseases that threaten human life more than any other disease, the need for effective cancer treatments with fewer side effects has increased. To this end, new types of anticancer drugs have been developed that can distinguish between normal cells and cancer and destroy only cancer cells. It is also called a targeted anticancer drug because it recognizes characteristics that are only found in cancer cells and selectively inhibits the division of cancer cells except for normal cells. Many of the anticancer drugs used recently are of this type.
A representative example of targeted anticancer drugs is angiogenesis inhibitors. As explained earlier, cancer cells divide at a very fast rate, so they require more nutrients than normal cells. To do this, cancer cells send signals to create new blood vessels near themselves so that they can draw on the nutrients in the blood. Angiogenesis inhibitors are anticancer drugs that are involved in this process. This is a method that prevents cancer from growing further by starving it by hindering the creation of blood vessels that provide nutrients to cancer cells, rather than directly attacking cancer cells. Starting with the discovery of an angiogenesis inhibitor called endostatin by the O’Reilly Research Team in 1997, many angiogenesis inhibitors have been developed and are being used or are awaiting commercialization, including Avastin, which is widely used for colorectal cancer, and DWM-M01A and DWM-M01S, which were developed in Korea.
Cancer is probably the most feared disease for modern people. This is because there is a perception that cancer is an incurable disease. However, the situation is not as bad as it seems. Research on cancer and the development of treatment methods are progressing faster than ever before, and innovative treatments have been developed one after another, especially in the past few years. Cancer is no longer considered a fatal disease as it used to be, but is transforming into a chronic disease 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 of anticancer therapy has made great strides, and recently, many good treatment methods have been developed, and the probability of surviving for five years or less after the onset of cancer has been increasing every year since treatment is started. As research continues around the world to identify the process of cancer development and develop effective anticancer drugs, it is possible to dream of a world without cancer.
