>>12758894there are a lot of things that make treating cancer difficult - since they're your cells, there's pretty much nothing you can do that doesn't affect your cells (the ones you like, not the ones that serve themselves). potential treatments have come leaps and bounds, yet statistically the tried-and-true are used because: they have a more predictable success rate, and I've heard people doing clinical research talk about how very few treatment options can match chemo and radiation except in specific circumstances.
one of those circumstances - leukemia - seems to do well with immunotherapy techniques that are only sure to improve over the coming years.
solid tumor masses in particular can resist chemo treatment via a number of ways - increased interstitial pH due to hypoxia reducing the ability of a drug to pass through the membrane, and increased interstitial pressure due to activated fibroblast producing more collagen. If they're located someplace where it's inconvenient or impossible to perform surgery safely, then there aren't many treatment options and eventually it will spread.
One promising route for cancer treatment is de-differentiation therapy, but like many promising treatments there isn't a wealth of data backing up its use and it surely needs refinement before it gets anywhere.
In the mean time, I recall there was a 2020 paper that discussed an immunotherapy technique targeting a monomorphic class-1 MHC type receptor. this is a great potential therapy but there's still the possibility that, like with other modified T cell therapies, it does a poor job with solid tumor masses (poor infiltration).
regardless, it's incorrect to assume that this is anything but an active field. SARS-CoV-2 has taken the spotlight for sure but cancer research isn't going anywhere. however, it's a depressing field, as a lot of the research doesn't get widespread use
