Question: What is or has been the worst case of cancer that you’ve researched and why is it difficult to treat?

Natalia Brodaczewska answered on 16 Mar 2020:

At the moment I am working on a research project on lung cancer. In many ways this is a very difficult cancer because it affects many people and, unfortunately, the survival rates are still very low. The reason why this cancer is so difficult to treat is that often we detect it very late, when the cancer has grown big and spread to other parts of the body. The symptoms of lung cancer can be very subtle – tiredness, weight loss or a cough. And because of that, many people don’t know that they have lung cancer for a long time. Hopefully, in the future we can find ways to screen patients for lung cancer to detect it earlier. There are also many new drugs which can attack cancer cells more effectively and scientists keep improving them all the time. So I’m hoping that in the next few years we can learn to treat this cancer better and help more patients get healthy again.