2024-02-21 06:15:00
Cancer is the leading cause of death in men and the second in women. In 2023, Public Health France recorded 433,000 new cases of cancer, a figure which has doubled since 1990. In France, in 2018, 157,000 men and women died from cancer. “Behind these figures, which are often cold and impersonal, there are lives. Grieving that can be avoided. Families that can rebuild themselves. Hope for many patients,” declared Emmanuel Macron in February 2021 on the occasion of the announcement of a ten-year national strategy to fight cancer. And the increase in cancer cases in France is unlikely to stop anytime soon.
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During the Paris-Saclay Summit: Choose Science, a major event organized by the Point to understand and shape the future, which will be held from February 29 to March 1, 2024, Sandra Oucher, vice-president of World Education Heritage and expert in nanomedicine and immuno-oncology, will hold a round table entitled “Will we be able to cure all cancers in the future? “. This time of reflection open to the public will take place on February 29 at the EDF Lab Paris-Saclay.
Point : Will we be able to treat all cancers in the future?
Sandra Oucher : Yes I think so. In reality, we are living in an age of scientific discovery that gives us hope for healing. For what ? We obtained a first scientific breakthrough thanks to our Japanese friends and Professor Yamanaka who won a Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 2012 by discovering pluripotent stem cells. This discovery opened the way to potential cell therapies. A paradigm shift that allows us to work on a treatment once morest the disease and no longer once morest a symptom.
The second major breakthrough, in my opinion, was the discovery by Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna of the CRISPR-Cas9 genetic scissors. These famous molecular scissors are capable of repairing a specific gene. This discovery allowed the two scientists to win a Nobel Prize in chemistry.
It is thanks to these discoveries that we might truly change the lives of patients. We have real tools that will allow us to treat these diseases in the future.
Do you have another example of revolutionary progress?
Let’s take the example of the first nanomedicine put on the market, in 1995. This treatment made it possible for the first time to provide an anti-cancer drug with a sort of invisibility cloak, like Harry Potter. This advance has made it possible to overcome physiological barriers to enable the delivery of the right drug to the right place and, ultimately, to increase the effectiveness of cancer treatments.
Thanks to these new discoveries, we can imagine the use of such vectors to, for example, bring the CRISPR-Cas9 scissors precisely to the genes to be repaired and thus cure many diseases in the future, not just cancer. It truly is a hope for hundreds of millions of patients around the world.
We are also living in an era of technological advancement. In the pharmaceutical field, these advances make it possible to reduce the development time of a drug in half by using models that are capable of predicting both the effectiveness and toxicity of a drug candidate, and of testing new combinations. therapeutics.
Today, everyone only talks regarding artificial intelligence. What will be its role in cancer research?
During the research and trial phases, we must test a number of drug candidates with very different mechanisms of action. Artificial intelligence allows us to analyze large sets of health data.
In France, we all have a Vitale card containing medical data. If cancer research centers but also large pharmaceutical companies might cross-reference the data from all Vitale cards, we might save an incredible amount of time. Today, creating a drug takes us at least ten years, if not fifteen. Thanks to predictive models, we might get ideas regarding the effectiveness and safety of new treatments more quickly. This would be an incredible breakthrough.
Isn’t the future also regarding better prevention?
Quite. The future also means supporting research to improve diagnosis. The earlier we can establish diagnoses, the more we will be able to cure patients, even before the first symptoms appear.
We must succeed in supporting patients even before they become ill. Thanks to scientific discoveries, we now have real screening capabilities. We must now inform populations as soon as possible to better prevent these diseases.
To date, a certain number of screenings have been carried out, but we must continue to democratize their access. We must invest more in prevention, while maintaining research efforts on diagnosis, alongside therapy.
Is there any hope of being able to cure certain cancers that are currently incurable in the future?
We have a recent example of the healing of young Lucas at the Gustave-Roussy Institute. Lucas was lucky to have a genetic mutation that made his cells more sensitive to treatment, to the point of being cured of this very serious and very aggressive cancer. Having identified this mutation allows us to imagine new therapies. We understand the pathophysiological mechanisms better and better. Hence the challenge of diagnosis. We might have much earlier genetic therapies, which would stop the development of cancer before the arrival of metastases.
But we must not forget to support research. New, more precise, more targeted treatments that can truly cure patients while reducing adverse effects might be created. Certain tumors sometimes remain difficult to access, such as those in the brain or pancreas. We need to improve the precision and delivery of active ingredients to these locations.
Unfortunately, research in France has suffered for around ten years from the reduction in public funding…
This is an observation that a good number of scientists share: we must continue to make efforts and the fundamental research of today creates value for tomorrow. We must not stop supporting fundamental research.
And this responsibility falls not only on the government but also on big pharmaceutical companies. Paul Hudson, CEO of Sanofi, also made a very good announcement of reinvestment in research, suggesting a prospect of developing new drugs in the long term.
Too often in the private sector, research is seen as a cost. But, in reality, it is a growing market. In the long term, we will have new treatments, and therefore new chances of curing millions of patients. We need to educate investors. And, on this subject, I think it is very important to help scientists to undertake, to create start-ups, by providing at early stages not only investment but also industrial expertise on pharmaceutical development .
You are someone who is optimistic regarding the future of research…
Yes, sincerely. If we continue our efforts in research, for better diagnosis, for new treatments but also for equal access to treatments, putting an end to cancer is possible.
You will be at the Paris-Saclay Summit on February 29 for a round table on the question of curing cancer in the future. Why should our readers come meet you?
I would say that you have to be curious. Then you can be proud to live in a country like France, which is experiencing real scientific advances in the cure of cancer. So, if you want to understand how France is a driving force in this area, you are welcome to this round table. You will also be able to question Fanny Jaulin, researcher at the Gustave-Roussy Institute, who will be very happy to shed this light on both research but also on the prevention and diagnosis of this disease.
Discover the Saclay Choose Science summit program and register to attend the conferences.
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