Cancer research largely proceeds in the wrong direction, towards ever more personalization to mechanisms specific to one tiny fraction of cancer types, or tiny fraction of tumors in that cancer type. Then people are surprised at the low cost-effectiveness of the expenditure. Which is not to mention that cancers will cheerfully evolve around an attack on any mechanism not vital to their operation.

Insofar as anything needs hacking, it is this wasteful focus in the research community. The research community needs a dramatic refocusing onto mechanisms that cannot be evaded and which occur in most or all cancers. The canonical example is to interfere in telomerase and ALT telomere lengthening. That can't be evaded, and all cancers do it. Shut these things down and cancer stops. Any cancer, any type, any stage, using exactly the same therapy. Yet the amount of work in this area is tiny in comparison to projects that verge on personalized medicine per tumor.