Q. Is blood cancer curable?
Doctor Answer is medically reviewed by SecondMedic medical review team.
Yes, blood cancer is curable in many cases. While each case of blood cancer is different, advances in treatment and care mean that there are now more options than ever before for those living with the disease.
The main types of blood cancer are leukaemia, lymphoma and myeloma. These cancers can be treated with chemotherapy, radiotherapy or drugs affect the immune system. You may need one or a combination of these treatments to manage your condition effectively.
In some cases, stem cell therapy may also be used to treat certain forms of blood cancer such as acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) and chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML). This involves replacing damaged cells with healthy donor stem cells - like a bone marrow transplant - so that they can grow back normal tissue instead of diseased tissue. The success rate varies depending on several factors, but it has been shown to greatly improve survival rates for those suffering from AML and CML even when traditional treatments haven't worked well enough before.
Newer targeted therapies are being developed all the time which focus on targeting particular proteins expressed in certain types of cancer cells rather than attacking all rapidly dividing cells like chemotherapy does; this often means fewer side effects for patients when compared to other treatments so it's another encouraging development in treating blood cancers with greater precision.
Additionally, clinical trials frequently offer new therapeutic avenues- particularly promising ones include use of checkpoint inhibitors which target programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1), high throughput sequencing approaches used to identify novel genetic targets amenable to therapeutics intervention, vaccination strategies designed specifically towards CLL treatment and immunotherapies such as CAR T cell therapies which have achieved some impressive successes over recent years.
Overall while there's still much work left ahead in trying to defeat every type of blood cancer once and for all - understanding what needs tackling most urgently among individual patients is key here - there has definitely been considerable progress made which demonstrates our determination against this challenging disease heading into 2020s decade!