Why is Cancer So Hard to Cure?
Cancer doesn’t discriminate. It strikes scientists and artists, children and the elderly, the famous and the unknown. We’ve all felt its cruel grip, whether through our own diagnosis or watching someone we love fight a battle they might not win. Despite decades of research and billions of dollars invested, cancer continues to outsmart us, evolving faster than our treatments, defying our understanding. Why is this so hard?
Dr. Zuzana Kečkéšová thinks the answer might be found not in tumors themselves, but in the tissues that refuse to grow them. As a Group Leader at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry in Prague and former Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT’s Whitehead Institute, she’s spent her career studying a fascinating question: Why do some parts of our body resist cancer while others succumb? What are these resilient tissues doing differently? And can we learn from their natural defenses to develop therapies?
Cancer is, in a sense, our own cells gone rogue, a rebellion from within. It’s not a foreign invader like a virus or bacteria; it’s us, turned against ourselves. This is partly why it’s so difficult to treat. How do you kill cancer cells without killing healthy ones when they’re so fundamentally similar? How do you stop a disease that constantly adapts, mutates, and finds new ways to survive?
I couldn’t stop thinking about this paradox after reading “The Emperor of All Maladies” and “When Breath Becomes Air,” and how cancer has humbled the brightest minds in science and medicine, how it’s stolen people in the prime of their lives, and yet how scientists like Dr. Kečkéšová persist in the face of these losses. There’s something both devastating and inspiring about confronting an adversary this formidable.
In this episode, we discuss:
• Why cancer is fundamentally different from other diseases and why that makes it so hard to cure
• How cancer cells are our own cells turned against us
• The surprising strategy of studying tissues that don’t get cancer to understand resistance
• What makes certain parts of the body naturally resilient to tumor growth
• The incremental progress being made despite setbacks and losses
• How cancer evolves and adapts faster than our treatments
• The emotional toll of working on a problem that affects millions, including people you know
• Where Dr. Kečkéšová sees hope in the future of cancer therapy
This is a conversation about confronting one of humanity’s greatest adversaries, and why the path to a cure might lie in understanding what our bodies already know how to do.
💡 Learn more about Dr. Kečkéšová’s research: https://keckesova.group.uochb.cz/en
💡 Follow Dr. Kečkéšová on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zuzana-keckesova-40366787/
💡 About Curiously: https://www.podpage.com/curiously/why-is-cancer-so-hard-to-cure/