Dear Govind,
The cancer is a complex disease with a huge number of unknown molecualr mechanisms and several theories and hypothesis about its causes. The researcher, should understand the causes of the disease and explore the cellular mechanisms responsible. For example, studying the drug resistance is very important to improve efficiency of currently used therapies.
With best regards
Bachir
Dear Govind
It depends on the area in which you work. If you are a clinical oncologist, prevention and sound advice to your patients should be an important task to perform. Do not be afraid of using non conventional therapies like repurposed drugs, as far as you have sound scientific information about these therapies as a complementary issue to conventional treatments.
In case you work in basic research, things are completely different. Choose a specific issue and develop your skills in it.
In my case I have chosen the field of repurposed drugs as the main object of my research in basic oncology as in clinical oncology.
But it is not easy to answer your question, because the scope of oncology, basic or clinical is so broad nowadays that it would take thousand of pages to answer it.
Good luck in your quest
The role of a cancer researcher, like that of any scientist exploring the health sciences, is to fundamentally improve the human condition. How one goes about this task, however--that is the "art" within the science. As those before me have mentioned, there are any number of angles from which to stab at this group of diseases, and there is likely no "one size fits all" approach.
Much of today's research focuses on individualizing therapy; ideally, one drug, one cancer, one patient. Though that may be a pipe dream, great strides have been made in understanding the heterogeneity of cancers within patient populations, and developing drugs that may better target them. For example, consider the ER/PR/HER2 paradigm in breast cancer.
Cancer continues to be a threat to human life, though must it always be cured? We can all agree that it's a tragedy when a 12 year old develops cancer, but what about a 95 year old? Perhaps for some, cancer is less of a "disease" and, rather, merely a method of dying. While I agree it's important to consider curative treatment, cancer therapy has for too long been a double-edged sword; in many cases, the treatment almost seems as bad as (if not worse than) the disease itself. I believe that cancer researchers should also consider palliative care, through the development of quality of life enhancers to better treat side effect and symptom burden.
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