It seems that we are increasingly learning more about cancer mechanisms and what things make useful and long-term therapeutic strategies work and fail to work. What can we say now that we would not have been able to say 10 years ago? How well can we now distinguish a cancer cell from a normal cell? Can we better direct apoptosis in cancer cells and what is limiting for this? What will be the impact of this knowledge for the next decade of research and for translational impacts? What are important next steps?
We can say now that we know more about buffers. Cancer cells are distinguishable by markers in recent research, which is going to assist greatly (literally colored differently than normal cells). Cancer has a unique profile that is quickly being discovered. We can absolutely better direct apoptosis in cancer cells through gene isolation, performed through advanced medical laboratory. Essentially, all that remains to be done is for a laboratory to discover, after marking with coloration, the cells that are cancerous via gene isolation and to cater a medicine towards that, like a vaccine but widely available to anyone at any stage.
Tumours are very heterogeneous. Genetic profiling of tumour cells can identify populations of cells that can survive in the circulation, and sub-populations that can initiate metastasis. "Liquid biopsy" with a simple blood sample followed by extraction of circulating tumour cells (CTCs) has the potential to allow monitoring of post-surgical patients in remission for warning signs of relapse, or monitoring of patients undergoing chemotherapy for drug resistance. Challenges include labelling and extracting all of the subpopulations of CTCs, handling samples rapidly and effectively to preserve the DNA/RNA, amplifying small quantities of nucleic acids and developing informative gene signatures as biomarkers.
See:
http://www.nature.com/nrc/journal/v14/n9/full/nrc3820.html
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266395633_Tumorigenicity_and_genetic_profiling_of_circulating_tumor_cells_in_small-cell_lung_cancer
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269695199_Evaluation_and_validation_of_a_robust_single_cell_RNA-amplification_protocol_through_transcriptional_profiling_of_enriched_lung_cancer_initiating_cells
Article Tumorigenicity and genetic profiling of circulating tumor ce...
Article Evaluation and validation of a robust single cell RNA-amplif...
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