When Fran Balkwill gives a lecture on cancer research these days she calls it Mission: possible. “We have come a long way,” she says. “This is the golden age of cancer research. Our knowledge is beyond anything that was imaginable 25 years ago.”

We know that cancer is caused by damage to DNA that can lead to cells behaving abnormally – failing to die, moving where they are not wanted and growing where they shouldn’t – but we are still hugely ignorant of what causes this damage. The drugs used to attack the tumours are too unspecific in their targeting and cancers have an invidious way of mutating.

What fascinates Balkwill is that, typically, more than half of a tumour is composed of non-malignant matter – blood cells and other stuff that has been drafted in to act as the support network for the cancer. “If we can attack that half of the cancer as well as the malignant half, then we will have a much better chance of making people better and keeping them alive longer. It’s a whole new line of attack,” she says.

She has been studying the links between inflammation and cancer, which she and her colleagues believe could be the fuel that feeds the fire started by genetic damage. Finding a way of reducing the swelling around tumours, they believe, could make it much easier for cancer sufferers to live with their illness.

The holy grail of the fight against cancer remains prevention. Balkwill believes that in this area the technology is improving fast, and she can envisage a time when we will be able to feed a drop of blood into a computer or even a mobile phone that will analyse the DNA and warn of early problems before they develop into anything serious.

The downside is that clinical trials cost millions and take years. And in a world with an ever-growing population, it is hard to see how medicines and screening for cancer could be made affordable to all. “I think that in 100 years we may be able to detect cancer early enough so that we will stop it ever developing in the first place,” Balkwill says. “But it will require an investment of time and money that we may not have.”

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