Personalized and More Effective Therapies
Michael Kastan, MD, PhD, is the William and Jane Shingleton Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology and the director of the Duke Cancer Institute. Kastan said new treatments would come from Duke’s continuing efforts to discover genetic and biochemical differences between cancer cells and normal cells. “Those discoveries lead to opportunities to develop preventative agents, biomarkers, and new therapeutics,” he said.
We have made tremendous progress in cancer diagnosis and treatment in the last 40 years. While many new therapeutics have been developed, a lot of progress has also come from prevention and screening, such as smoking cessation, colonoscopies, mammograms, and PSA tests.
Improved technologies are also making a big impact. We already have the ability to monitor progress in cancer treatments with simple blood tests, and it is likely that such blood tests will be applied to cancer screening in the next 10 to 20 years, enabling diagnosis of cancers at earlier stages. Since early-stage cancers are much more curable than advanced cancers, such screening tools could be game-changers.
Improved technologies also lead to minimally invasive surgical approaches, more sensitive and specific imaging capabilities, and more precise delivery of radiation therapies. All of these changes improve the outcomes and quality of life of cancer patients.
We will also continue to develop therapies that are more effective and less toxic, including therapies that directly target the tumor, sparing normal cells, are specific for a given tumor’s mutations, or stimulate the body’s own immune system to kill the tumor cells.
Twenty-first century cancer medicine will also become increasingly personalized, with treatment approaches based more on the biochemical and molecular characteristics of the tumor than the tumor location. Duke has an exceptional program in personalized cancer medicine, built around a robust Molecular Tumor Board, a multi-disciplinary and multi-disease weekly conference that helps physicians throughout the Duke system identify the optimal treatment approaches for their patients.
The cancer world is changing rapidly, and the DCI is fulfilling its mission statement to “Discover, Develop and Deliver the Future of Cancer Care…Now.”
What Comes Next:
- Neuroscience: Using New Technologies to Understand the Brain
- Medical Education: Training Students to be Change Agents
- Vaccines: Fine-tuning Immune Response
- Geriatric Medicine: Caring for the Aging Brain
- Health Equity: Addressing Disparities in Pallative Care
- Epidemiology and Population Health: Reaching Beyond Our Walls
- Integrative Immunobiology: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Human Immune System
- Genomics and Precision Health: Using Genetic Tools to Prevent Disease
Story originally published in DukeMed Alumni News, Fall 2024.
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