We haven't cured cancer, but we have cured MODELS of cancer.
Scientists will often use MODELS of cancer, because there are so many types of cancer. For example, we will take a biopsy of a live person's breast cancer tumor, throw it in a dish, and do crazy stuff with it to make that cancer able to live forever in said dish.
This is now a "cancer line". For example, a cancer line of triple negative breast cancer. Specific cancer to find a specific cure.
Nowadays how this starts is we analyse this "cancer line". We look at all of its DNA to find that it lacks "gene x" or "protein y" compared to normal healthy cells. We find a target that is very different (or totally absent) in the cancer, and a target that we like, and think, "hey, if we fix that one thing, can we fix the cancer?"
So we find a drug or a genetic treatment and target it to fix this problem.
Many times, this "gene x" or "protein y" that is wrong in the cancer cell is so important, that fixing that one little thing out of 100,000 other things can save the cancer.
So anyways, we take this cancer line, and take an inbred mouse family with a real shitty immune system. We inject the human cancer cell line into this mouse and make sure the mouse's shitty immune system is too weak to fight off the cancer. If the mouse can 'get' the human cancer, and the cancer spreads and kills the mouse, success!
Then we give the mouse this simple treatment to restore 'normal' function to our target gene or protein. And lo and behold, the mouse is cured of all cancer!
This is a lousy way of curing human cancers, which are all unique and merely follow trends, however it gives us more insight into these trends, as well as understanding of how exactly the cancer is spreading and killing people.
It also cements our classifications of cancers. When we find 'treatment X works in this model of brain cancer but not that one', then we can know in real life those patients need to be treated differently.
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