Alternative cancer treatments
Since the 1940s, medical science has developed chemotherapy, radiation therapy, adjuvant therapy and the newer targeted therapies, as well as refined surgical techniques for removing cancer. Before the development of these modern, evidence-based treatments, 90% of cancer patients died within five years. With modern mainstream treatments, only 34% of cancer patients die within five years. However, while mainstream forms of cancer treatment generally prolong life or permanently cure cancer, most treatments also have side effects ranging from unpleasant to fatal, such as pain, blood clots, fatigue, and infection. These side effects and the lack of a guarantee that treatment will be successful create appeal for alternative treatments for cancer, which purport to cause fewer side effects or to increase survival rates despite evidence to suggest a 2–5 fold increase in death with alternative medicines.
Cancer Breakthroughs 2020
Cancer Breakthroughs 2020, formerly Cancer Moonshot 2020, is a coalition announced in January 2016 in the United States with the goal of finding vaccine-based immunotherapies against cancer. By pooling the resources of multinational pharmaceutical, biotechnology companies, academic centers and oncologists, it intends to create access to over 60 novel and approved agents under exploration in the war against cancer and is expected to enable rapid testing of novel immunotherapy combination protocols. The initiative is being managed by a consortium of companies called The National Immunotherapy Coalition (NIC). The NIC plans to design, initiate and complete randomized clinical trials in cancer patients with cancer at all stages of disease in up to 20 tumor types in as many as 20,000 patients by the year 2020. The project's stated goal is to aggressively focus on rapidly developing new treatments for the disease. The organization attempts to rethink how cancer is tackled, using the body's own immune system and re-training it to detect and destroy the body's cancer cells.