The Genomic Era

The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO)'s annual conference has been taking place this week in Chicago. It's a very big deal: about 4000 presentations from cancer researchers will be given, and clinicians (the ones that deal with patients) will learn about some of the latest advances in cancer treatment. It's always an exciting time for research nerds like me.

I've been following the news all week, and for the week or so before that, reading about research results for different treatments that are in the pipeline. They give me something to look forward to. A couple of years ago, the Big News for NHL was about Zevalin, the radioimmunotherapy treatment. Last year, everyone was excited about Bendamustine. This year, the Big News in fNHL is....well, I'll be giving some updates over the next few days. You'll just have to keep reading.

But I will share a post from Dr. Len's Cancer Blog, written by Dr. Leonard Lichtenfeld, from the American Cancer Society, who is attending ASCO this week. The blog post is called "The Genomic Era: We Have Reached A New Tipping Point In Cancer Research And Treatment." Dr. Len discusses the dominant theme in this year's ASCO conference: the use of genome testing to detect cancer and to further research on potential treatments. The really Big News from the conference has to do with Melanoma, a particularly dangerous cancer: genome testing has identified a marker in half of patients; treatments can now be targeted to that marker.

I liked Dr. Len's summary of the "eras" of cancer treatment:

"In the past, we have had the chemotherapy era, where we were able to put combinations of toxic drugs together to cure and control some forms of cancer. We have had the adjuvant era, when we learned that using chemotherapy could delay the progression of cancer after primary treatment, usually surgery. We have most recently had the targeted therapy era, when we learned that drugs targeted at genetic changes in cancer cells could impact survival, sometimes substantially. We wish we had a vaccine era, although there have been some practical successes and hopeful research that continues in that arena. And now we have the genomic era."

What I like most about the description is how fast it has moved. We aren't out of the "chemotherapy era," really; there are lots of very effective chemo treatments for lots of cancers, including NHL (Bendamustine is a chemotherapy). But we're also dealing with treatments that add to chemotherapy, or make it better, or maybe replace it. As Dr. Len says, we're at a "tipping point" now, where maybe a whole new approach to treating cancer will happen soon.

It's all very exciting. Over the next few days, I'll share what I've learned about new NHL treatments.