system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why are there so much 'breakthrough' research on cures for cancer, but they don't seem to get out of the laboratories and into the hospitals?

I keep seeing articles on 'breakthrough' cures for cancer, but somehow or another these technologies don't  seem to be found in hospitals- I mean the 'go to' cure still boils down to chemotherapy? Why is this so?
gpt
Research is hard. If we knew how to cure cancer and it was just a question of spending enough money or time, we'd have done it by now.

But it doesn't work that way. There are lots of ideas on how to cure various types of cancer but to test each idea takes millions of dollars and years of studies - typically first on animals, and then on humans only if the animal tests are successful. Most of those ideas won't end up working - they'll end up doing more harm than good. A few ideas will help a bit, but they won't be a complete solution. Other ideas won't work but will lead to an interesting discovery that others can learn from.

Research is based on a grant funding model. Every year many thousands of scientists apply for grants to work on cancer research. In their grant application they explain the idea they want to try.

Funding organizations (government and private charities) choose which researchers to fund based on how much they like the idea, and the track record of the researcher applying for the grant.

At the end of a grant - typically a few years, like 3 years or 5 years, the researcher publishes their findings. Obviously 99% of them won't actually discover a cure for cancer, so they have to put as much of a positive spin on what they did learn. Even if they weren't successful, they may have learned something - and it's important to publish that information so that others can learn from their attempt - even if that just means learning that a particular idea didn't work and should be tried.

Journalists then take those publications, most of which are quite honest about the fact that they made interesting incremental progress that might someday help lead towards a cure for cancer, and they write headlines that are a lot more sensational based on those. So you end up hearing every week about a "major breakthrough" when in reality it was probably just another small step in the right direction.