Today cancer is a more treatable disease than at any time in the past. More than half of all people with cancer now live at least 5 years after being diagnosed. This progress is the result of better ways to find cancer early and better ways to treat cancer once it is found.
But cancer treatment is still far from ideal. Many cancers cannot be cured, and some are still very hard to treat effectively. And treatments like chemotherapy can sometimes cause severe side effects that can affect a person's quality of life. Patients and doctors have long hoped for cancer treatments that would work better than (or at least as well as) the ones we use now but with fewer side effects.
Scientists have learned a great deal in recent years about what makes cancer cells different from normal cells in the body. This has helped them find 'targeted drugs' - drugs that focus more on the cancer itself without having major effects on normal cells in the body. The American Cancer Society has funded the search for such treatments for many years.
One promising new cancer treatment to come from this research is called anti-angiogenesis (an-tee-an-jee-oh-jen-uh-sis) treatment.
