Fronts of the war on cancer

Imaging covers the ways of seeing cancer inside the body without cutting, from X-rays to tracers that light up a single protein.

Tests on tissue and blood that say what kind of cancer it is, what is driving it, and which drugs might work.

Early detection and screening means finding cancer before it causes symptoms, when it is most curable.

Removing or destroying tumours physically, increasingly with robots, image guidance, and heat or cold instead of a knife.

Using focused beams or radioactive particles to kill tumour cells while sparing healthy tissue.

Drugs that kill fast-dividing cells. Still the backbone of many cures, and now the warhead inside smarter drugs.

Targeted therapies are drugs designed to switch off a specific broken protein that a cancer depends on.

An antibody that finds the tumour, carrying a tiny dose of very strong chemotherapy that is released only inside it.

Immunotherapy helps the patient's own immune system recognise and destroy the cancer.

Taking immune cells, engineering or expanding them, and giving them back as a living drug.

A molecule that homes to the tumour carries a radioactive atom. The same molecule with a different atom lets you see the tumour first.

Cutting off the hormones that some cancers, especially breast and prostate, need to grow.

Epigenetic and transcriptional therapy changes how genes are read rather than the genes themselves.

Supportive care and survivorship covers everything that keeps a patient well enough to receive treatment, and well afterwards.

Software that reads scans and slides, predicts outcomes, designs drugs, and matches patients to trials.

Drug discovery platforms are the tools used to find the next drug: gene screens, organoids, models in mice, and AI.

Stopping cancer from starting: vaccines, germline testing, lifestyle, and preventive drugs or surgery.

Devices and physical therapies treat cancer with electric fields, heat, or sound rather than chemicals.

What people eat, drink, weigh and do affects who gets cancer, how treatment goes, and who relapses. Those questions are answerable, and the good studies answer them with the rigour of a drug trial.

What cancer treatment took, and whether it comes back: hair, hearing, fertility, bone, muscle, nerves, memory, the heart, skin, sexual function and the years afterwards. Recovery begins during treatment rather than after it, and structured exercise has more evidence behind it than everything sold as rejuvenation put together.