![]() So there’s a real need for better ways to determine risk level for each patient.Ī number of different approaches have come out in recent years that focus on looking at the molecular make-up of a tumor, rather than the clinical characteristics. ![]() At the same time, some patients with high-risk disease are put in the low-risk category, and as a result, they aren’t treated aggressively enough, giving the cancer time to metastasize. The way we’ve done it for years is to look at the clinical characteristics, or features, of a patient’s tumor, but that approach isn’t always accurate.Ī number of patients who are put in the high-risk category actually have low-risk disease, and because they’re misclassified, they end up going through unnecessary surgeries and treatment. ![]() “The medical community has long grappled with a prostate cancer problem: how to accurately determine high-risk cancer from intermediate- or low-risk disease. “My Team May Have Landed on a Better System for Identifying Patients at High Risk for Prostate Cancer”ĭeborah Ricci, Senior Director, Oncology Translational Research, I’ve seen NK/T lymphoma patients in the hospital fighting every day for their lives, so if we can do anything to help, it will be extraordinarily rewarding.” We’ve just finalized a protocol for a clinical trial, and the first patient could be enrolled in the next few months. This was a huge moment for our team because it means there’s a chance this medication will help NK/T lymphoma patients. Fortunately, we found the majority of their samples-more than 80%-had very strong expression of these markers on their cells’ surface. If just 10% or fewer of the patient samples expressed the surface marker required for the drug to function, it might be a challenge to conduct a clinical trial. We discovered that that drug is able to decrease the population of the same kind of cells involved in the cancer we were working on, so we believed it might work for our patients, too. In other words, there’s a critical need for a medication that can help these patients-and our team recently realized there was a drug already on the market that might do that. The disease can be so aggressive that life expectancy for these patients is only a few months. But if a patient relapses after first-line treatment-the first, best available treatment for a disease-we don’t have effective therapies for it. If the illness is caught early, it’s often treatable. “NK/T cell lymphoma is a rare and very aggressive form of cancer that often affects the nose and sinuses, and for reasons we don’t yet understand, it’s more prevalent in Asian populations. ![]() Jennifer Yang, Senior Director, Shanghai Discovery Center, Shanghai, China “We May Have Found a New Way to Help Treat a Rare Form of Cancer” So we asked four oncology scientists to share some pivotal “Aha!” moments of their Janssen careers-the epiphanies that are helping to change the game when it comes to cancer treatment. Call them “Aha!” or “Eureka!” moments, but it’s that light bulb experience when you realize you’ve just landed on something amazing. This way, their innovations and collaborations have the potential to make a greater impact than if they were studying many diseases at once.Īnd when it comes to cancer research, even small breakthroughs could someday translate into healthier futures for countless people living with these life-threatening diseases. That’s why the hundreds of scientists who work for Janssen Oncology worldwide focus their research on three forms of cancer for which a need for new treatments is particularly great: prostate, blood and lung. A disease like lung cancer alone can have numerous subtypes, so we’re talking about many battles being waged-on many different fronts. And it’s not just one epic skirmish, either. Ne of the biggest health battles the world’s scientists are waging is against cancer.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |