Text | "Finance and Economics National Weekly" reporter Mi Su
In February, the National Cancer Center released the latest edition of national cancer statistics. The data shows that in 2016, there were about 4.064 million new cancer cases and 2.4135 million deaths in China, respectively, with an average of 11,000 people diagnosed with cancer every day.
In 2019, the State Council issued the Healthy China Action (2019-2030), which lists the prevention and treatment of cancer as an important item.
Every year from April 15th to 21st is the National Cancer Prevention and Control Publicity Week, this year's theme is "Cancer Prevention and Treatment Early Action", we will combine this "Cancer Biography" today to talk about one of the oldest enemies in the history of human medicine: cancer.
As early as around 400 BC, the term cancer appeared in the medical literature, and the Greek doctor Hippocrates, who is known as the founder of Western medicine, found in a breast cancer patient that there were often dilated blood vessels near the tumor, like crabs digging sand, so the cancer was named "karkinos".
It is estimated that Cancer students are familiar with this word, because this is the Greek word for "crab", the word in Latin spelling becomes cancer, after entering English, it is also known as "cancer".
Hippocrates not only named cancer, but also created the theory of humors. He believes that the human body is composed of four "body fluids" of blood, black bile, yellow bile and mucus, and each body fluid has its own unique color, stickiness and characteristics.
These four bodily fluids are in an ideal balance in the normal human body, but in the case of illness, an excess of certain bodily fluids will upset the balance in the body. Until the 1st century AD, the ancient Greek physician Galen defined the stasis of black bile as the culprit of carcinogen.
For a long time after that, it was difficult to find traces of cancer in the historical literature, because cancer is an age-related disease, and its incidence sometimes increases exponentially with age. For example, a 30-year-old woman has a 1 in 400 chance of developing breast cancer, and in a 70-year-old woman, that number rises to 1 in 9.
In ancient times, people were threatened by tuberculosis, cholera, smallpox, leprosy, pneumonia and other diseases, and before they could get cancer, they may have died of other diseases.
Until 1858, the German pathologist Philsau proposed that "all cells come from cells", which seems to be a simple "cell theory", but it is an important hypothesis about the nature of human growth. He realized that cancer is a typical disease caused by pathological hyperplasia.
When Philsau died, a new theory of cancer was gradually sketched out based on his findings. Cancer is a disease caused by a certain kind of cellular mutation that is out of control and has the characteristics of faster growth and greater adaptability.
Now that the pathology of cancer has been discovered, the next step is how to overcome it.
One night in 1882, when the German immunologist Ehrlich was riding home on the night bus, his mind suddenly came to mind: he believed that synthetic substances should be able to produce specific effects on certain diseases, and that as long as the compound showed a specific affinity for the parasites, then the parasites would be killed.
Little did he know that the idea would lead to one of the most important discoveries in the history of cancer — chemotherapy. Shortly thereafter, X-rays were also discovered and used to treat cancer, also known as radiation therapy.
Although surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy formed a troika of cancer treatment in the 1950s, these methods still failed to prevent the recurrence of many cancer metastases.
In the 21st century, with the continuous deepening of cancer biology research, the emergence of targeted therapy, immunotherapy and gene sequencing has brought a glimmer of victory to the human anti-cancer war.
Just in 2021, ms. Chen, a lymphoma patient in Shanghai, gradually disappeared after receiving CAR-T cell immunotherapy.
This is a new type of precision targeted treatment of tumor cells that has emerged in recent years. Its treatment process is somewhat peculiar and looks a lot like "private customization".
First of all, the T lymphocytes in the patient's blood need to be isolated, gene editing is performed in vitro, and the antigen recognition of specific tumors is integrated into the DNA, so that T cells that can accurately identify a certain cancer cell are obtained.
Then in vitro culture, multiplication, and finally the drug is injected back into the patient's body, so that they "attack" the cancer cells, reduce or eliminate the ability of cancer cells to destroy the human body, to achieve the purpose of treating tumors.
Although more accurate and effective treatment drugs and technologies continue to come out, at present, we can not overcome all cancers, for cancer, prevention is still the most important. Specific to individuals, what are the scientifically proven cancer prevention methods that we can do ourselves?
First of all, select a professional physical examination institution for regular anti-cancer physical examination.
The current technical means in the mainland can detect most common cancers early, such as the use of gastrointestinal endoscopy can find cancer of the digestive tract; regular detection of HPV can find cervical cancer; low-dose spiral CT of the chest can detect lung cancer; ultrasound combined with molybdenum can detect breast cancer.
In addition, in daily life, it is still necessary to regularly work and eat, and stay away from carcinogens.
Then the closest carcinogen to us must be tobacco and alcohol.
Smoke can cause more than a dozen kinds of cancer, and 90% of lung cancer is caused by smoke, including second-hand smoke and even third-hand smoke left on clothing. Tobacco contains 93 substances that are clearly toxic, of which 78 are clear carcinogens.
Alcohol is also a Class 1 carcinogen because alcohol enters the body and is metabolized into acetaldehyde, which can cause DNA mutations that can induce cancer.
There are many people in China who carry defects in the acetaldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH2) gene, to put it bluntly, those who "drink alcohol and put it in the face" and are particularly vulnerable to alcohol and acetaldehyde.
In addition, Mukji, the author of "Cancer Biography", believes that cancer prevention is still a relatively young discipline, and there is still no scientific basis for those "so-and-so foods cause cancer" in daily life, and we still don't trust it.
Cancer, in the final analysis, still needs to be detected early, treated early, and cooperated with doctors to have curative effects.
Cancer Legend: The King of Diseases
By Siddhartha Mukhji and translated by Ma Xiangtao
CITIC Publishing Group, January 2022
This book tells the story of how cancer was first documented thousands of years ago, until the twenty-first century when humans recognized, treated, and conquered cancer. Mukherjee examines cancer with the precision of a cell biologist, the perspective of a historian, and the enthusiasm of a biographer, documenting the war against cancer that has been fought by humans for thousands of years.
If you want to know more about the content of the book, please leave a message in the public comment area, Xiaomi has prepared 3 copies of "Cancer Legend: The King of Diseases", which will be given to the top 3 readers with the most likes in the comment area (the number of likes is counted as of 23:00 next Saturday).