Oncological research has a pending issue with patients of cancer breast with limited therapeutic options, but is focusing its efforts on reducing the toxicity of treatments that, on many occasions, limit the daily lives of those affected.
That is the objective set by the MEDSIR clinical oncology research company based in Barcelona (Spain) and New Jersey (USA), whose scientific leader, Dr. Javier Cortés, assures EFE that it is not a minor issue.
“Not only does it improve the quality of life of patients, which of course, it also optimizes the administration of drugs,” explains to EFE from Chicago (USA), where MEDSIR has presented 13 clinical trials that partly address this problem.
The platform chosen to make them known is the Annual Congress of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), the main one in the sector and which, from Friday to this Tuesday, brings together some 60,000 professionals around to the novelties that are being tested.
Not enduring the treatments, emphasizes the director of the International Breast Cancer Center, implies that the doses must be reduced, that the therapy be stopped or that it be abandoned altogether, with the impact that this can have on the patient’s prognosis.
Side effects such as diarrhea or a shortage of neutrophilic white blood cells (neutropenia), common among patients with HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer who are treated with sacituzumab govitecan, can be contained if the therapy is anticipated to occur and administered from the start drugs to avoid it.
“Common sense” changes
Preventing something that is statistically known to happen is “common sense”, adds the expert, but it reflects how new therapeutic combinations can represent a before and after for patients.
“We are convinced that this will also mean a better perspective,” Cortés emphasizes the conclusions of that study, called PRIMED and which has already shown significant reductions in the percentages with which these two sequelae occur.
It is not so much about changing treatments, something that depends on the approval of the competent authorities, but rather about getting the most out of those already approved, and modifications such as those proposed by your center. “they can be implemented tomorrow.”
The Metastatic Breast Cancer Association estimates that a 30% Of the 33,000 new cases of breast tumor detected each year will end in metastasis. And near the 80% of diagnosed women overcome the disease, but twenty% does not respond to treatments.
Triple negative breast cancer, aggressive due to its rapid development, is “the great Achilles tendon” of the scientific community, says the doctor: “We need to better understand these tumors, better study this heterogeneity, and better understand the mechanisms of resistance and sensitivity.”
Taken to the football field, these situations force “get better players, make new signings and make them play as a team, play well. (…) We really have to optimize the strategies.”
Artificial intelligence is already used in diagnoses, but it is not yet applied to treatments.
MEDSIR, with an international focus since its foundation in 2012, has also opted to give a new spin to tools that serve to evaluate the evolution of patients and has confirmed in another trial that magnetic resonance, “faster, much simpler and cheaper” than the PET scanner, may be equivalent to the latter.
The 13 studies that have been brought to this edition of the American forum have been presented in collaboration with their strategic partner Oncoclínicas & Co, the leading oncology group in Brazil with outstanding research potential in Latin America and with which, according to the expert, they have forged an important strategic alliance.
MEDSIR seeks to optimize independent research and also optimize it at an international level: “The only way to advance in medicine is to work globally”says Cortés, for whom independent studies “designed by doctors and researchers (…) they solve daily problems for patients.”
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Source: Gestion
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