Many inroads are being made in the fight against cancer, a national cancer researcher told a Weyburn audience on Wednesday night.

The executive director of the National Cancer Institute of Canada (NCIC), Dr. Michael Wosnick, spoke at the Weyburn Legion Hall about research in the fight against cancer.

Wosnick based his speech on frequently asked questions about the latest research for cancer. He said that the most frequent questions he receives are about where money is spent and what is being done.

His first point was about the progress being made in cancer research, and he talked about the production of cars as an example.

Wosnick showed a picture of an old Ford vehicle and a brand new Ford car to show that cars are used more specifically today then they were when they first rolled off the assembly line.

The same progress has been made for fighting cancer. The example he gave was prostate cancer.

"It is the use of seeds planted directly in the prostate," Wosnick said.

He added that, like the production of car models for different uses, tests are being done on the use of radiation therapy in a specific part of the body to fight cancer.

Another issue he addressed was the amount of radiation treatments needed in breast cancer patients. Wosnick spoke about several tests that are currently being done to reduce the amount of radiation treatments.

He also addressed the question about how hard it is to kill cancer cells. It is generally thought that cancer cells are hard to kill, but Wosnick said it is not true.

"What is different is only killing cancer cells," Wosnick said.

The drugs and treatments for cancer are effective in killing rapidly dividing cells, which cancer cells do; however, they are not the only cells that rapidly divide. There are many healthy cells that rapidly divide and the challenge is to kill the cancer cells and not the healthy ones.

Many people have also asked Wosnick if there will ever be a cure for cancer, which he feels is an inaccurate question.

"The right question is will we ever find cures of cancers," Wosnick said, explaining that there are many different cancers which cannot be killed off with just one solution.

To prove how far cancer research has come, he gave a statistic on the chances of surviving cancer. He said that in the 1940s the chances of survival were one in four, in the 1960s the chances were one in three and currently the chances are better than 50 per cent.

"Thankfully we are creating more and more survivors," he said.

The goal for the future in fighting cancer is to make it a manageable disease such as diabetes. No one worries about dying when they are diagnosed with diabetes because it can be managed with Insulin, and researchers are hoping the same can be done for cancer.

Luckily researchers are getting closer to that goal because we now understand the disease's genes, and questions that couldn't be answered 20 years ago can be answered.

One of the more amazing tests being done that Wosnick showed was the use of viruses to fight cancer. When cancer infects a part of the body, it loses its anti-viral defence.

The VSV virus, which is found in grasshoppers, has been tested on mice with lung cancer. The virus attacks all of the affected areas of the lung and leaves the healthy tissues alone, meaning that it was only harming the cancer-affected tissues.

After two weeks with the VSV virus, the lung looked perfectly normal compared to the cancerous lung.

A major issue that Wosnick brought up was the amount of funding that the NCIC currently has for research.

In 2003-2004, 29 per cent of the research was approved and funded, which cost about $12 million, while the other 71 per cent were approved but never funded. He said there could be breakthrough research in that 71 per cent of projects, but because it isn't funded, it can't be carried out.

The president of the Southeast unit of the Canadian Cancer Society in Weyburn, Myron Fletcher, has known Wosnick for several years and was impressed by his presentation.

"He breaks it down into what they are doing in research," Fletcher said.

The Canadian Cancer Society helps raise funds for the NCIC so the institute can continue with their research.

Fletcher is hoping that the Canadian Cancer Society can continue to help the NCIC to fund the 71 per cent who were denied funding in the past and finally find a cure for cancer.

"We want to eradicate cancer and we are sure going to try," he said.