Joining forces to improve lung cancer treatment
April 26th, 2009
Lugano, 27 April 2009 – Prevention, personalized therapies and closer collaborations between surgeons, medical oncologists and radiation oncologists will result in better outcomes for lung cancer patients and those at risk, a leading European expert says.
“Lung cancer is a complex disease. It is one of the most complex cancers, and the more we learn about the biology of the disease, the more we realize that improved cancer care will result from multidisciplinary treatment,” said Prof Robert Pirker, from the Medical University of Vienna, Austria.
At 8:36 am on May 11th, 2009 Gregory D. Pawelski said:
Joining forces with collaborations between surgeons, medical oncologists and radiation oncologists can result in better outcomes for lung as well as all other cancer patients. While patients may need any one of a wide array of doctors, each may handle only one aspect of care. Patients need a “team” of doctors, with one to step forward to serve as quarterback, and have easily accessible electronic medical records.
The benefits of molecular targeted therapies, however, may impart a clinical benefit by stabilizing tumors, rather than shrinking them (substituting shrinkage for stabilization). Molecular targeted therapies need approaches to determine optimal dosing, to assess patient adherence to therapy, and to evaluate treatment effectiveness.
What would be more beneficial is to test pharmacodynamic endpoints with the ability to measure multiple parameters in cellular screens now in hand using flow cytometry. Using a systems biology approach where compounds are first screened in cell-based assays, with mechanistic understanding of the target coming only after validation of its impact on the biology.
Whether it is one protein alone (unlikely) or in combination with other proteins and other mechanical factors, it could be vastly more beneficial to assess the net effect of all processes (systems) instead of just individual molecular targets.