Cancer research is undergoing a major paradigm shift in which scientists and doctors are increasingly able to use genetic information to personalize treatments for cancer patients. At the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in June, national leaders, including seventeen Damon Runyon Clinical Investigators, presented the results of promising studies involving new, targeted therapies that are transforming cancer treatment.
Speaking to the Wall Street Journal on this shift in the world of cancer research, Dr. John Mendelsohn, Damon Runyon alumnus and President of Houston’s MD Anderson Cancer Center, said “A pattern is developing at an accelerated pace where we are able to match genetic information about a tumor to a new agent and get results.” In short, scientists are better able to match treatments to individual patients.
This trend, researchers say, will accelerate their ability to determine the effectiveness and safety of treatments and the rate at which they are made available to patients. Currently, it can take up to 14 years for a new treatment to move from development to market.
Fortunately, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration sees the high-potential value of targeted therapy and is using its priority review process to bring many of these personalized treatments to the front of the line. The drug Yervoy, tested in a clinical study led by Jedd D. Wolchok, MD, PhD, a former Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, was fast-tracked in 2010 and approved by the FDA earlier this year.
Two more promising cancer drugs are now on the FDA fast-track: vemurafenib and crizotinib. Doctors at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center found that a subset of skin cancer patients had a 48% response rate to the targeted treatment vemurafenib compared to 5% for the current standard therapy. Similarly, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital discovered that 60% of patients with ALK positive lung cancer who received crizotinib were still alive after two years.
> Read the WSJ article featuring John Mendelsohn
