We’ve come a long way in the fight against the Big C

EURO fever has started!

And while I ponder whether I should support Germany (due to my heritage) or England (or probably neither as I don’t like football), I’ve also been thinking about how far we have come in cancer advancements since Bobby Moore’s England team won the World Cup in 1966.

The fightback really started in the Fifties and Sixties although the disease has been around for thousands of years.

It’s not the first time I have thought about this since my Nanna had breast cancer aged 30 in the Fifties.

Back then there was no chemotherapy on the NHS. The only option was to take the breast off and potentially give radiotherapy.

She only had the former and went on to live a long and happy life.

One stand-out advancement in recent time is immunotherapy, which no doubt you have read a lot about recently.

In just a few  years researchers and regulators moved several different immunotherapy strategies from bench to bedside.

There have been huge advancements in cancer prevention

Kris Hallenga, CoppaFeel! founder

I, too, am benefiting from switching my immune system on at the moment and helping it to fight cancer.  Even for patients who have exhausted all traditional treatments, immunotherapy is able to halt cancer growth often with mild side effects.

Scientists started  manipulating the body’s immune system to attack  cancer more than a century ago but it would take a deeper understanding for it to finally reach us cancer patients today.

A German study has found a way to get your body to fight cancer cells with a simple vaccine and it is hoped this could one day lead to a universal cancer vaccine.

There have also been huge advancements in cancer prevention.

I can’t even imagine the days when smoking and cancer were not linked.

We are in a very lucky position to help our bodies prevent getting cancer in the first place – whether we do or not is another issue, however.

We now have vaccines to ensure some strains of cancers don’t happen at all – the first HPV vaccine, for  cervical  cancer, became available from 2006 and is now given in 58 countries.

Detecting cancers has improved vastly. My Nanna’s breast cancer wouldn’t have been pinpointed by a mammogram – they didn’t start until 1969.

I often wonder how a CoppaFeel! campaign would have looked then.

There have been big steps in how we deal with the disease too.