Human cancer: Epidemiology, hallmarks, and defense strategies

Cancer is a group of noncommunicable diseases that poses a significant public health problem worldwide. Malignancy causes morbidity and mortality that affect humans across spectrums of age, gender, or ethnicity. With the advent of modern medicine in the twenty-first century, the understanding of the pathophysiology of cancers and their relationship with human hosts can be summarized in hallmarks of cancer biology. Such understanding provides invaluable insights to defend the host and elucidate defense strategies that allow individualized approaches to guide cancer treatment using systemic therapies as well as locoregional therapies. Individualized cancer therapies may then utilize defense mechanisms including cytoreductive surgeries, molecular targeting, as well as geographic targeting that deliver differential toxicities to cancers.Newer defense strategies against human malignancies have been enabled by newer discoveries in pharmacodynamics, pharmacokinetic, release of immune blockade, as well as radiobiology. Individual mechanisms and combinations may be optimized to deliver largest differential toxicities to cancer and acceptable and low toxicities to the host.