Very quickly, why is trying to augment DNA repair itself in our rapidly-dividing cells not being pursued so much? It seems like most of the focus is on either (1) trying to somehow intricately negate the various ways in which the cell cycle is commonly dysregulated, which is after the damage to the tumor suppressor gene(s) or oncogene(s) has already been done; or by (2) trying to broadly kill the cancer in novel, more specified ways, one of which is by genetically modifying cultured immune cells to target the cancer.
But cancer incidence increases rapidly (by some high order polynomial of age, it appears), and it seems that rather than fight each individual cancer, giving humans superior DNA repair proteins would be the simplest solution, if it were possible.
DNa repair is very complicated. But maybe there is hope that we could evolve better DNA repair proteins (like through directed evolution), or get some hints from other organisms that are highly resistant to DNA damage.
And if those proteins could be created, then hopefully through the various methods of gene therapy, which seem to be progressing quite fast, we could get many of our cells to express those proteins.
how is this approach to the problem of cancer impractical?
