By Roy Fuchs
Two cancer specialists told the Westport Sunrise Rotary Club today that researchers are gaining ground on identifying molecular abnormalities that are cancer and increasingly treatments are tailored to the individual patient.
Drs. Andrea Ruskin and Jeffrey Franklin said the war against cancer is far from won. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Contributed photo
But Andrea Ruskin and Jeffrey Franklin said the war is far from won.
Ruskin, a hematology and oncology specialist at the Whittingham Cancer Center at Norwalk Hospital, said that 15 years ago the medical community knew far less about the mechanisms of cancer.
Consequently, large numbers of patients with what were then common symptoms were treated similarly, she said. Since then, researchers have identified many molecular abnormalities that enable oncologists to implement individualized tumor therapies, she said.
Over the next 20 years, Ruskin said researchers will increasingly understand cancer at the molecular and genetic level.
She noted that we probably won’t eliminate the disease, but we will gain the knowledge that will allow physicians develop and implement more and more effective treatments, ones tailored to the manner in which the disease manifests itself within each individual patient.
Chemotherapy won’t become a cure all, but “will become more effective, less damaging and will minimize collateral damage,” Ruskin said.
She said new methods of radiology including PET scanning that more clearly differentiate between a tumor and scar tissue will be more widely used.
Surgery will become less invasive, including “same day surgery that reduces anesthesia risks and leads to quicker recovery,” Ruskin said.
She said greater emphasis will be placed on supportive and palliative modalities, including in-home hospice care for patients with advanced symptoms, for whom treatment is directed more toward reducing nausea, discomfort and pain than to curing the disease.
Franklin, a research assistant professor at the Ingram-Vanderbilt Cancer Center in Nashville, Tenn,. Addressed current research into the origins of cancers—the kinds of cells involved, the molecular mechanisms and how cancer producing mutations occur.
Researchers are learning how cancers become resistant to therapy, he said.
Research is penetrating down to the cell level, analyzing the DNA of individual patients to understand very specifically the disease’s
