Deaths from cancer will become a thing of the past within three to four decades.

That is the prediction of one of the world's leading cancer researchers, who was in Dublin today.

Gerard Evan, Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge, said the acceleration in the development of novel therapies means all cancers will within decades be containable, if not curable.

Last year, Prof Evan made headlines when he claimed that such are the dramatic recent improvements in cancer treatments that his children, who are both in their 20s, would never have to worry about dying from cancer.

Speaking to RTÉ News ahead of a seminar organised by the Irish Cancer Society, entitled "Can Research Eliminate Cancer", Prof Evan said he stood over that claim.

He said the acceleration in the development of novel cancer therapies that work in new ways over the last 15 years makes for an optimistic future.

Prof Evan said he could be wrong, but when one looks forward 30 years it does not seem like a particularly rash statement.

He said cancers, at their heart, are particularly simple organisms, with a straightforward set of things that go wrong with them.

But he said until now we did not have the where-with-all to fix it.

Now, he said, we know what is going wrong at the molecular level and have a chance of remedying that and based on that platform there will be tremendous advances.

As a result, he predicted the majority of cancers in the majority of patients will become if not treatable, then containable, within three decades and people will be able to live out their lives.

A fellow of the Royal Society, Prof Evan said funding for cancer research could always be improved.

But he said in the main it is well supported by individuals who care.

Prof Evan praised Irish cancer research, saying although there is a small community here, it functions very well.

He said having a small group of people who work together is sometimes better than having a much larger group who do not.

Prof Evan's work focuses on understanding the molecular basis of cancer cells, how they get signals that tell them what to do and how they make decisions.

In particular he is focused on a particular class of those molecules which regulate which genes go on and off.