Targeted therapy and personalized medicine are the key words for victories against cancer
Targeted therapy is a real revolution in the treatment of cancers: the treatment is targeted, which means that it no longer seeks to eliminate all the cells, both good and bad, as we did before, but only cancer cells. preserving healthy tissue.
How? ‘Or’ What ? Cancer cells are genetically altered and no longer follow the normal rules of division. Targeted therapy knows how to recognize them thanks to genetic signals and destroy them.
Are we also talking about personalized medicine? What is that ?
It is also a new way of treating cancers by adapting to the tumor and the patient. For example in lung cancer, there are 5 or 6 different tumors which each benefit from its own treatment.
But that’s not all: according to Jacques Raynaud, president of the ARC, today thanks to the knowledge of genes, it is possible to know the reactions of everyone to a treatment: either we responds to treatment, or we are not, which avoids treating for nothing some non-responders.
What are the cancers that have benefited the most from these great innovations of targeted therapy and personalized medicine?
First, it was the leukemias for which we went from 20% cure to 88%, a huge leap! Then breast cancer, lung cancer, colon cancer and now skin cancer, malignant melanoma!
How much cancer is appearing today and how many are healing?
The figures have just been given by INCa: 1,000 new cases are diagnosed every day in France. And this figure is increasing slightly now. The increase is linked to the fact that they are being screened more, but also that the population is aging and has time, one might say, to develop cancer. But what should be remembered is that today one in 2 people is cured of their cancer, they were only one in 3 15 years ago and in 10 years we will increase to 2 in 3 people.
And where will progress come from above all?
Prevention! Not smoking, not drinking too much, eating a balanced diet, playing sports … pays off a lot: of the 1,000 new cancers that appear every day, 4 00 could be avoided, you hear 4 00! You know what you have left to do!
Reference:
Teaser and trailer of the web documentary “Cancer research: everything is accelerating
INCA / ARC / INSERM press conference ahead of World Cancer Day on February 4, 2012
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