Scientists at the Mayo Clinic in Florida, US, injected mRNA into the cancerous cells to inhibit their growth completely. So the cancer cells would essentially be told to stop reproducing, or as Sarah Knapton wrote in her article in The Telegraph, "it was much like applying brakes to a speeding car" (Knapton). So through this experiment, to answer the above question, yes. We might have found a way to stop cancer from growing, mutating, and spreading.
However, this is a brand new experiment, conducted this past week. Although the test was only applied on human cells, the scientists hope to target larger tumors in the near future to "shut them off". So far, the group has mainly focused on the effects "in very aggressive human cell lines from breast cancer and bladder cancer" (Knapton).
You can check out the article here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11821334/Cancer-cells-programmed-back-to-normal-by-US-scientists.html
Granted, as said above, this is a brand new experiment, so the full paper and data are published on the journal Nature Cell Biology, and an account is needed to read the specifics of the experiment and the results. But this is a huge step in stopping cancer! As noted by Henry Scowcroft, Cancer Research UK’s senior science information manager, “There’s a long way to go before we know whether these findings, in cells grown in a laboratory, will help treat people with cancer. But it’s a significant step forward in understanding how certain cells in our body know when to grow, and when to stop. Understanding these key concepts is crucial to help continue the encouraging progress against cancer we’ve seen in recent years.”
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