Personalized Oncology

Patient Power, the excellent website founded by Andrew Schorr, that provides video and podcasts geared toward educating cancer patients, has a new podcast called "Personalized Oncology: Where Are We Now?"

The podcast features an interview with Dr. Tony Blau, an expert in personalized medicine from the University of Washington, who gives an update on the whole idea of "personalized medicine" as it relates to cancer.

Basically, personalized oncology is based on the idea that as we look more and more closely at cancer's genetic makeup, we can see that, in some ways, each individual patient's cancer is unique. That is, not all Follicular NHLs have the same genetic makeup, even if the cells look the same under a microscope during a biopsy. Mine is different enough than someone else's that it  might explain why a treatment works for me but not someone else. So personalized oncology would have us look at our cancer cells' genes and make decisions for treatment based on what was found on that level.

Several cancers already have tests that let this kind of thing happen, allowing an oncologist to recommend one treatment over others.

The interview doesn't so much get into individual cancers or treatments, but more into where the state of the field is, how personalized medicine affcets patients, and how it can empower us as patients. That last part is pretty appropriate, given that it's coming from Patient Power.

It's a little vague, but given how detailed it could have been, it's an interesting 13 minutes. (Of course, if it had been as detailed as it could have been, it would been about 15 hours long....)