Microsoft hopes to solve cancer problem within 10 years

US technology giant Microsoft has claimed that it could "solve" cancer in the next 10 years by treating the illness in a similar way to a virus attacking a computer system.

Experts from the company are confident that the expected advance in technology will allow them to "reprogramme" cells to make them healthy.

Microsoft is better known for making computers and operating systems, but has quietly stepped up its investment in medical research in recent times. It uses building computer-modelling tools to help pharmaceuticals with drug development.

Head of the company's research lab in Cambridge, Chris Bishop, told Fast Company that the human body is not as complex as is often made out to be.

"The complex processes that happen in cells have some similarity to those that happen in a standard desktop computer."

By combining the fields of biology and computation, it's possible to examine the similarities between human cells and technology.

Andrew Philips, head of Microsoft’s biological computation group, said that detection of such diseases via technological means could take as little as five years.

"It’s long term, but I think it will be technically possible in five to ten years time to put in a smart molecular system that can detect disease," Philips told the Daily Telegraph.