Now this: personalised cancer treatment

Personalised therapy, also called precision medicine, is a form of treatment that is tailored specifically to treat abnormal genes in individual tumours. No two cancers are alike, just as no two people are alike. Personalised medicine is based on a person’s genetic makeup and how their tumour grows. Using this data, doctors hope to find prevention, screening, and treatment strategies that may be more effective and find treatments that cause fewer side effects than the standard options.

HERE’S EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE PROCESS

Personalised cancer screening and treatment plan includes:

• Determining the chances that a person will develop cancer and selecting screening strategies to lower the risk
• Matching patients with treatments that are more likely to be more effective and cause fewer side effects.
• Predicting the risk of recurrence, which is the return of cancer, example: Recurrence score in early Breast Cancer.

How personalised medicine is different

Before this treatment was discovered, most patients with a specific type and stage of cancer received the same treatment. However, it became clear that some treatments worked better for some patients, than for others. This process is now an active part of the treatment plan or as part of a clinical trial. A clinical trial is a research study involving people.

Examples of personalised medicine

Some examples of personalised medicine strategies for cancer include targeted treatments. A targeted treatment focusses on the cancer’s specific genes and proteins that allowed the cancer cells to grow and survive. Researchers are finding new targets each year, creating and testing new drugs for these targets. This is used for targeted treatments in a few cancers such as Breast Cancer, Colorectal Cancer, Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumour, Kidney Cancer, Lung Cancer, Melanoma, Multiple Myeloma, some types of Leukemia and Lymphoma and some types of Childhood Cancers.

The future of personalised medicine

Despite the promises of personalised cancer treatments, not all types of cancer have such treatment options. Genetic testing for patients and tumour samples may be costly and time-consuming. Also, many insurance plans may not cover the costs of these tests. In addition, some of them, such as targeted treatments, can also be expensive. However, personalised medicine is an evolving approach to cancer treatment. Doctors are not completely aware about the genetic changes that occur in a cancer cell. Consult your doctor to known more about personalised cancer treatments and how they can be a part of your treatment plan.