Perhaps, as has been suggested by some of the data at this CaP CURE meeting, gene therapy will cause a biological prostatectomy. The other avenues of research that I think will prove fruitful will be the avenues of nutrition and herbal therapies. Aaron Katz, M.D., Assistant Professor of Urology, Columbia University Helene Brown, Director, Community Applications of Research, UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center Immunizations and immunology have become very big in the field of cancer research. These approaches are based in prevention, but they might hold the key to stopping certain forms of cancer altogether. Our fight against polio shows how this works.
Cancer is much more complex than polio, because polio is a single virus kind of disease.
They were looking for something to interrupt the life cycle of the polio virus, and they found it in a vaccine. I think the same thing is happening in cancer today. I think that within the next ten years, while we study how to interrupt a gene, change it and make it normal again, we are also going to develop a personal genetic susceptibility overview for each of us. With that ability, we can weed out the people who are not susceptible to cancer and identify those people who are. Then we can take the proper steps in preventing them from getting the disease.