Cancer Cure Just One Year Away, Scientists Claim
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PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- A big headline caught the attention of many on Tuesday as a team of scientists say they would cure cancer next year.
Scientists are getting closer everyday with 18 million new cancer cases being diagnosed worldwide every year.
A cure is something many are hoping for but the experts we talked to say it's probably not going to happen next year.
Tuesday's excitement started in Israel.
Finding a cure for cancer has been an elusive quest, but now a team of Israeli scientists say they've done it.
"We believe we will offer in a year's time a complete cure for cancer. It will be effective from day one, will last a duration of a few weeks and will have no or minimal side-effects at a much lower cost than most other treatments on the market," Dan Aridor, the CEO of Accelerated Evolution Biotechnologies, told the Jerusalem Post.
According to reports, the treatment, called MuTaTo, or multi-target toxin, uses a combination of cancer-targeting peptides and a toxin that will kill cancer cells -- essentially a cancer antibiotic.
The company says the treatment will eventually be personalized based on a biopsy from a patient and a specific cocktail of the drugs will be provided based on the type of cancer.
The CEO says the company has concluded its first exploratory mice experiments, where human cancer cell growth was inhibited and had no effect on healthy mice cells.
"This is far from proven as an effective treatment for people with cancer, let alone a cure," said a statement from the American Cancer Society. "The news report is based on limited information provided by researchers and this work apparently has not been published in scientific literature."
Doctors say there is currently no specific overall cure for cancer, meaning no guarantee that it will never come back.
Instead of cure, doctors prefer to say "remission," meaning there's a chance the disease can return, but, in general, a person who stays cancer-free five years after a diagnosis has improved odds for complete recovery and some people are considered cured.
