I've been watching this work for a couple of years. There are some pretty cool ideas coming down the pike, too slowly of course, but obtuse thoughts that have the potential to be major break throughs.

I was lecturing at a NYU cancer conference last month, and I met someone that I have worked with from a distance for 5 years on the AAOMS oral cancer task force, Dr. Brian Schmidt. When I listen to this guy speak, I really get how dumb I am about cancers. He explained in really simple terms why oral SCC is so hard to kill. Genetically it actually changes during treatment, and really isn't the same thing at the end it was at the beginning. Which is why chemo drugs only work in many cancers for a short period of time, then become ineffective. Smart cancer find a different route.... (There are some dumb cancers, but not many) The cancer just begins to work in an alternate way. Think of the picture of the flights in the airline magazines showing all the routes a particular airline flies to NY. (There's a zillion lines all over the map) What happens if they stop flying one of the routes? There are about 20 more lines that will still take you there. This is the cancer for dummies version of the idea, that made it so clear to me.

The more we think we have cancer figured out the more we realize we don't. Radiation is the only thing so far to deal with a constantly genetically changing process like cancer. It doesn't care how often or in what ways the cancer changes (like figuring after a short period of time how to work around an EGFR drug in 3-4 months, making the drug that seemed to be working now useless) It is a scorched earth tool, that kills everything - mutated into some derivative or not, and of course plenty of healthy cells at the same time. But it is why something so destructive is still the heavy weapon in most cancers.