Cancer is a group of diseases that we may never fully cure (why are cancer cells difficult to treat), but scientists are optimistic that vaccines, personalized medicine, and smart lifestyle choices will help prevent and treat more cases than currently exist.

We asked three cancer experts - Nobel Prize winners Prof. Harald zur Hausen, Prof. Walter Ricciardi and Dr. Elisabete Weiderpass - for their thoughts on treating cancer. They are all members of the EU Cancer Horizon European Mission Committee, which will help define Europe's specific goals in this area over the next decade.

Prof. Harald zur Hausen, German Cancer Research Centre, Heidelberg

"Evidence of cancer-linked infections offers hope for preventing up to half of all cancers"

If we can cure cancer once and for all - that's an open question I can't answer. It is very possible that we can dramatically reduce the incidence of cancer, but what we are currently seeing is that the incidence or incidence of cancer is increasing globally.

There was a slight decrease in death rates among cancer patients, but the increase in incidence was not offset by the decrease in death rates. There are still a large number of cases emerging every year, and if we really want to do something about cancer in the future, we need to stop this growth.

We know that there are many cancer risk factors that can be avoided. At present, we also know that about 20% of cancers are related to infection. Not only can we effectively immunize patients against these types of cancer, but we can actually eradicate it, especially hepatitis B (a cause of cancer) and human papillomavirus (which Professor zur Hausen found to be linked to the cancer cervical cancer), for which we currently have vaccines available.