The word ‘incurable’ can be difficult to hear when we talk about cancer. If a person has an incurable cancer, it can mean that they have a type of cancer that current treatments cannot completely eradicate. But even if a cancer is incurable, it does not necessarily mean that it is untreatable. Advances in cancer treatment driven by ongoing research mean that many people with advanced or incurable cancers can now live for longer.
What does it mean when a cancer is 'incurable'?
An incurable cancer is any type of cancer that cannot be completely eradicated by current treatments. This does not mean that the cancer cannot be treated, it just means that it cannot be cured right now.
But even with incurable diseases, there may still be many treatments available that can help to reduce the impact of cancer. These treatments could work by:
- Removing some of the cancer.
- Slowing down or stopping the cancer from growing and spreading.
- Increasing the amount of time before the cancer comes back.
Some treatments may not affect the disease itself but help to reduce symptoms and improve quality of life. These are called palliative treatments. Ongoing international cancer research may also lead to new treatments in the future that can improve how we treat the cancer.
Everyone’s life has been touched by cancer. Although we are making significant strides towards improving quality of life and survival rates for cancer patients, there is a long road ahead. Through research, our motivation is to enhance knowledge and contribute to our collective vision to one day live in a world where every type of cancer is curable.
Is incurable cancer the same as terminal cancer?
When a loved one is diagnosed with cancer it can be confusing to know what some of the terms mean. An incurable cancer is not necessarily the same as a terminal cancer. If a cancer is described as terminal, or ‘end-stage’ it usually means that it can no longer be controlled by currently available treatments. Some palliative treatments can still help to control pain and make life more comfortable.
If a cancer is described as incurable it means that the cancer will not go away. But there may still be treatments that can help to control the cancer, sometimes for a long time. These treatments can help patients have a good quality of life and live longer. With research, we hope that this will be the case for more people with cancer in the future.
Doctors might sometimes call these cancers ‘treatable, but not curable’. It is estimated that over 100,000 patients in England are living with this type of cancer.
How we talk about cancer is evolving:
The different medical words used in cancer can be confusing, and complicated. And thanks to research, more and more people with cancer are also living longer, healthier lives. This is changing how we talk about the disease. Sometimes we don’t yet have words that describe these new and different experiences of cancer. Speak to your healthcare team if you are unsure what your cancer diagnosis means to you.
When is a cancer considered to be cured?
Of course everyone with cancer wants to know if they have been cured, but this can be a difficult thing to define. This is because many types of cancer can return - sometimes more than once - and sometimes even after many years.
Instead you might hear doctors using words like ‘remission’, which means the signs and symptoms of the cancer have decreased or disappeared completely. Or sometimes they say that there is ‘no evidence of disease’ or 'NED'.
However, the chance of cancer returning does usually decrease over time. This means that the longer that you are cancer-free after being successfully treated for the disease, the less chance you have of the cancer coming back.
Doctors often consider a cancer to have very little chance of returning if there are no detectable cancer cells in the body, and the person has been completely free of any signs and symptoms of the disease for at least 5 to 10 years.
Are all incurable cancers advanced?
Not all incurable cancers are necessarily advanced, but most advanced cancers can be very hard to cure. Advanced cancers have managed to spread away from the original tumour. Once this happens, they can be much more difficult to treat.
Meanwhile some types of blood cancers are considered incurable even if they are not advanced. For example, some blood cancers may follow a long-term pattern of relapse and then remitting (going away) over many years, and can be successfully managed with long-term therapies.
Which cancers are considered to be incurable?
Cancers diagnosed very late:
Some cancers, like pancreatic cancer and the rare lung cancer mesothelioma do not have serious symptoms until they are quite progressed. This makes them less likely to be detected until they have spread, and more difficult to treat.
Cancers with few treatment options:
Some cancers are so rare that we have very few treatments to help. Cancers like adrenocortical cancer, which affects the adrenal glands, and is only diagnosed in 1 or 2 people per million every year. Adrenocortical cancer can be treated by surgery if caught early, but once it spreads, it cannot often be cured.
Cancers in a difficult location:
Tumours growing in places like the brain or spine - where they can be hard to reach or removed through surgery - can be particularly hard to treat.
Aggressive cancers that have spread:
Some cancers grow so fast that they can be much harder to treat, especially once they have spread to other parts of the body. These aggressive cancers often require urgent treatment, and that is not always possible.
Cancers that have become resistant to treatment:
Sometimes treatments can stop working and the cancer can become resistant. When this happens, doctors must try a new treatment that targets the cancer in a different way, but this is only possible if other treatment options are available.
Cancers that have come back:
Sometimes cancer can return after treatment. And some cancers, like some types of bladder cancer, are more likely to do this than others. Once a cancer returns it can be more likely to be aggressive, or more resistant to original therapy, making it harder to treat.
Thanks to Curestarter support, many of our researchers around the world are searching for new solutions to these problems right now:
How do immune cells participate in the spread of pancreatic cancer?
This project hopes to find vital new treatments for pancreatic cancer patients with no current options by better understanding how pancreatic cancers spreads.
Could testosterone be used to treat a very rare cancer?
Adrenocortical cancer is rare and aggressive, with limited treatments. These researchers have found exciting signs that testosterone could help slow its growth.
Could changing the timing of radiotherapy help it work better?
This project hopes to reveal if changing the intervals between radiotherapy doses makes it better at treating one of the most common types of brain tumour.
Can we design better treatments for triple-negative breast cancer?
Researchers are developing a highly innovative way to deliver treatments directly to tumours to improve survival rates of aggressive breast cancer.
Why do treatments not work for some non-smoking lung cancer patients?
Researchers hope that exploring the effect of specific mutations on the development of lung cancer will pave the way for personalised treatments for patients.
Can we stop cancer coming back by learning more about cancer cells?
Researchers are exploring the role cancer stem cells play in cancers coming back after treatment, to try to stop this happening so often in patients.
Why can we still not cure all cancers?
Despite huge progress in how we detect and treat cancer, we still sadly cannot cure every case. There are several reasons why. Here are the top four:
- Cancer is a complex disease. Cancer is actually a collection of hundreds of distinct diseases, each with different causes and drivers. On top of this, we now know that every single cancer contains countless combinations of molecular and genetic changes. In fact, even two separate cancer cells in the same tumour can be pretty different. This makes every tumour unique, and tricky to treat. It also leaves us with a lot of unanswered questions about how cancer starts and grows. This is why we support curious researchers looking to unravel the complex causes of cancer, and finding clues to new cures.
- Cancer is sneaky. Cancer has existed about as long as we have, which means it is very good at evolving. Cancer cells can adapt to survive new treatments, and learn how to change and thrive despite being targeted by various therapies.
- Cancer is also smart. It can hide from our own cancer-busting immune cells that are trained to track it down. It can even use our immune system to protect it. This makes it very hard to pin down, and keeps us in a constant race to come up with clever new targeted treatments, and new ways to help our immune system tackle the disease.
- Cancer is a worldwide problem. Cancer affects millions of people every year. Global cancer cases are predicted to increase to 35 million in 2050. Nearly 1 in 2 people born in the UK are now predicted to develop cancer at some point in their lives.
Although research has made sure that if you develop cancer today, you are much more likely to have it diagnosed early, and treated well, there are still so many challenges that we need to solve before we can see no life cut short by cancer. And fixing a worldwide problem like cancer needs worldwide solutions. This is why we fund the best cancer research, wherever in the world it happens to be.
Can incurable cancer be treated or managed?
Even if a cancer is considered incurable, there are often treatments available that can slow cancer down or shrink tumours. These can be used to extend life, or as palliative treatments. Some of these treatments include:
- Surgery is sometimes used to remove parts of the cancer, even if it cannot remove it all.
- Chemotherapy and radiotherapy can also be used to shrink or reduce the amount of cancer in the body.
- Targeted treatments like some immunotherapies or hormone therapies are also sometimes used to help keep an incurable cancer at bay.
These treatments can help people with incurable cancers live for many years. But sadly this is not the case for everybody. For too many people with incurable and advanced cancers there are still limited treatment options, and shorter life expectancy.
We need discovery research like ours to tell us more about how cancer starts, and how it survives. It gives us the pieces we need to put together new treatments, and new ways to target the disease. Without research, many cancers would still be considered incurable, and, importantly, untreatable.
It is thanks to many research breakthroughs, including projects kicked-off by our very own Curestarters, that survival for many cancers has hugely increased.
Research leads to better detection and better treatments.
When it comes to turning the incurable into the curable, testicular cancer is a huge success story. It is highly treatable, and these days is also usually curable.
This is due to a combination of factors, including improvements in treatment, as well as better awareness and earlier detection. People like our Curestarter Jack, who was diagnosed with testicular cancer when he was just 28, can now live their lives to the fullest with their families and loved ones.
Research-driven advances in screening and early diagnosis also means that prostate cancer is now much more survivable. The number of people surviving at least ten years after a diagnosis has increased from just two in ten in the 1970s, to over eight in ten by 2018.
It’s a similar story for many other cancers, including melanoma skin cancer, Hodgkin lymphoma, and breast cancer. Ten-year survival for each of these cancers has largely improved in the UK, from under five in ten in the 1970s, to around eight or nine in every ten in 2018.
Your donations are more important than ever.
Our researchers have contributed to this fantastic progress over the years thanks to the support of our Curestarters. In one of our most powerful examples of the impact of your donations, we supported the early discovery research work that resulted in the development of olaparib (also called Lynparza), a targeted treatment that is now used to treat certain types of ovarian, breast, pancreatic and prostate cancer.
When Fiona was diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer, all she could think about was her experience in the NHS, working on the gynaecology ward. She had seen far too many ovarian cancer patients over the years who were given then unthinkable news that there were no treatment options left.
Thankfully, olaparib was a complete game-changer and Fiona is now at a stage where most of the time she can put cancer in the back of her mind, and she feels like she has a future with the ones she loves.
But despite successes like these, we cannot forget that for some cancers, like pancreatic cancer, lung cancer, oesophageal cancer and some brain cancers, survival rates have barely changed since the 1970s.
Thanks to Curestarters like you, our researchers are already on the case, searching for new cures for these often incurable cancers:
How Dr Laura Soucek 'drugged the undruggable'
An innovative but risky discovery research project that you helped fund in 2013 has allowed Dr Laura Soucek to develop a new cancer treatment and prove that it was ready for clinical trials.
A new approach to drug dosage could help tackle hard-to-treat cancers
Thanks to our Curestarters, researchers in Australia have made the surprising discovery that lowering the dose of anti-cancer drugs could help tackle hard-to-treat cancers more effectively.
A crucial Curestarter breakthrough for rare childhood brain cancer
Thanks to your support, Curestarter researchers in Ireland have identified a possible new way to target diffuse midline glioma, a rare and aggressive form of childhood brain cancer.
The first thing I would like to say to Curestarters is a big thank you for your generous contributions. This funding will help us to continue our important work in finding a cure for multiple myeloma, a devastating and incurable disease. Please know that your donations will be used wisely and effectively, and that every pound will go towards advancing our research. Once again, thank you for your generosity and for joining us in the fight against cancer. We could not do this without you.
Your FAQs about incurable cancer:
What does it mean if cancer is incurable?
An incurable cancer is any type of cancer that cannot be completely eradicated by current treatments. This does not mean that the cancer cannot be treated, many incurable cancers can still be treated with the aim of prolonging or improving quality of life.
Is incurable cancer the same as terminal cancer?
Not necessarily, If a cancer is described as incurable it means that the cancer will not go away. But there may still be treatments that can help to control the cancer, sometimes for a long time. Terminal cancers, sadly, can no longer be controlled by current treatments.
Can people live with incurable cancer?
Yes, thanks to new treatments and advances in how we detect and treat cancer, some people with cancer can now live a long time with a good quality of life.
Could incurable cancers become curable in the future?
It’s possible. With research, we hope that more cancers will become curable in the future, as better treatments are developed.
Why are some cancers harder to cure?
Cancer is complex and there any many reasons why some cancers are harder to cure than others. Some cancers become resistant to treatment more quickly, others are in harder to reach places. Some cancers can grow more quickly, and spread more easily than others. All of these things can make it some cancers harder to treat.
How is research helping to find cures for incurable cancers?
Cancer research helps us to understand how these cancers grow, and spread. With this knowledge we can find new ways detect, treat, and one day cure incurable cancers.
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