Cancer’s New Era Of Promise And Chaos

[n2doc]

In a major speech to cancer doctors Saturday, the outgoing president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology told his colleagues to prepare for a new era in which rapidly advancing genetic technology will change the way cancer is treated for the better – but also force doctors to change the way they invent and test drugs and care for patients.

This bold declaration came as the first results of this way of thinking bear fruit. A drug made by pharmaceutical giants Roche and Daiichi Sankyo reduces the risk of death from melanoma by 63% – if the skin cancer tumor has a particular mutation. A Pfizer lung cancer treatment awaiting regulatory approval keeps lung cancer patients alive longer – if they are in the small minority that have a very specific genetic defect. Two clinical trials that have been presented at ASCO ‘s annual meeting in Chicago, which I’m attending, showed it is possible to pick drugs for patients using a panel of genetic tests.

George Sledge, the ASCO president and one of the country’s top breast cancer researchers dramatically and eloquently spelled out what these big changes will mean. This story is a condensation of his prepared remarks, which ASCO shared with me. Mistakes are mine. Credit for marshaling these facts and constructing this argument belongs to Sledge.

Cancer doctors, Sledge said, are entering an era of “genomic chaos,” a phrase that describes both the genetic madness that makes healthy cells turn into deadly cancers and the instability that incorporating rapidly advancing genetic technology into cancer care will bring. The way clincial trials are run will need to change dramatically. New kinds of electronic health records will need to be created to collect data, inform doctors instantly of new results, and track how good a job physicians are doing. Sledge, whose one-year term as ASCO president is ending, argued doctors need to face up to this blast of new technology.

http://blogs.forbes.com/matthewherper/2011/06/05/cancers-new-era-of-promise-and-chaos/