I work in a cancer practice (melanoma) and I can speak rather adamantly as to the efforts being made to FIND A CURE! I have seen too many patients die from this horrible disease and I am very happy to say that as far as melanoma is concerned, great advances have been made in treatment. When I first started here in 2003, the prognosis was very bleak for Stage IV disease - you only had a 33% chance of being alive in 12 months. It was grim and horrible.
Now, in 2018, if you have Stage IV disease - you have an 87% chance of being alive in 12 months. In fact, some of our patients who commenced on new therapies (either targeted therapy or immunotherapy) are now completely disease free 4-5 years later! Without more concrete data the word "cure" can't be bandied about and there is much research to be done in the group of patients that don't respond to either targeted therapy or immunotherapy - we don't why they don't respond, yet.
I can't speak for other cancer groups but I defy anyone to tell me that there is no intention to cure melanoma - that's poppycock. (Yes, I'm rather passionate about this topic.)