PBS's News Hour has recently been running a series on cancer. The piece that I found most interesting is called Cancer Treatment: Are Personalized Molecular Profiles in our Future, available as a video clip 9about 9 minutes long).
I've mentioned personalized treatments quite a bit; they really do seem to be the future of cancer research. I think this video does a nice job of explaining how personalized treatment (especially those that target genetic abnormalities) actually works.
One segment involves interviewing a woman who had her tumor cells implanted in a mouse. As new treatments become available, they are first given to the mouse, so doctors can study the tumor's reaction to the treatment before they are given to the patient. Pretty fascinating.
The doctor that is the main subject of the video says he envisions a day when cancer patients can go to a pharmacy, give the pharmacist a genetic profile of the tumor, and receive some treatment right there. That would be a wonderful thing, indeed.
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