The anticancer therapies today allow you to make the cancer a treatable disease. In most cases the treatment is a combination of classic therapies, such as radio and chemo, and more modern therapies resulting from years of research. The novelty in the medical field is precisely the search for alternatives that can improve the rate of patients cured of the disease of the century.
Incidence and survival
In the first post-pandemic year there was a slight increase in cancer cases in Italy. The report “Cancer numbers 2022” however indicates that the data is due to the decrease in screening and diagnosis campaigns due to Covid, the aging of the population and the tendency not to attend hospitals for fear of contagion. This has resulted in many new cancer cases being discovered now. However, the research has never stopped and it is estimated that an increase in new cases corresponds to a survival increase in relation to the growing numbers. Let’s take lung cancer, one of the most frequent among men and women. Although the percentage of patients affected by this disease has increased, the continuous progress of research has determined the increase of diagnoses aimed at the elimination of cellular mutations through drugs with a molecular target.
Prevention remains a valuable weapon for anticipating and early detection of diseases and subjects at risk. But it is essential to innovate the answer by implementing it with ever new forms of treatment: such as precision diagnosis. A progressive improvement was identified in the subjects who underwent tailor-made therapies.
Precision cancer therapy
Cancer is a disease characterized by the uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells. The real revolution occurred in the diagnosis with the Next Generation Sequencing (NGS). He individual patient DNA sequencing it has become a common practice to implement targeted therapy. Thanks to the identification of DNA cell alterations, a molecular identikit of the disease in progress is created. Knowing the specific cancer can help the oncologist to attack it with selective drugs capable of controlling and stopping tumor growth in a targeted manner. “It is estimated that 25% of patients may be candidates for a targeted treatment”explains Antonio Russo, oncologist and professor at the University of Palermo. “Today, the broadest clinical information concerns lung cancer, where drugs aimed at alterations are already registered and reimbursed“, continues.
Since not all tumors have the same mutations, it becomes useful to develop drugs that act on specific categories of cellular mutations and not on the specific organ. Many specialized centers already have i Molecular Tumor Board (MTB), or gods multidisciplinary teams of specialists who choose the sample to analyze and interpret the molecular data.
Immunotherapy works from within
Immunotherapy is not a cure for cancer, but it is supplementary support to traditional therapies. It consists in the use of drugs that awaken the immune system stimulating it to attack unwanted cells. It cannot act directly on the tumor, but it strengthens a system that can fight it. The T lymphocytes, responsible for attacking cancer cells, are often deactivated during the disease and do not function as they should. The task of immunotherapy is precisely to reactivate the cells responsible for defense of the body to make them work to their advantage by interfering with the tumor mechanism. Currently these drugs are used in the treatment of various diseases including skin cancer, lung cancer and Hodgkin’s lymphoma, all of which are very common. The advantage of the association between chemo and immunological drugs is the possibility that lymphocytes recognize tumor cells as precision targets by blocking their growth. “The dream of oncologists” says the President of the Italian Medical Oncology Association.
What the future of anticancer therapies holds
Only future studies will tell us what else cancer research has in store. The latest achievement in the field of precision anticancer therapies is the theragnostics. Specialists are focusing on theuse of radiopharmaceuticals for cancer treatment. The European Commission has given the green light to the therapy. A radiometabolic cure is based on nuclear medicine, six drugs are already available in clinical practice: yttrium-90, holmium-166 and radium-223. It is the emblem of one of the most innovative models of personalization of care the result of a careful evaluation by the Molecular Tumor Board.
Professor Marco Maccauro who deals with nuclear medicine at the IRCCS Fondazione Istituto Nazionale Tumori Milano specifies how the effectiveness of this solution is in the “find the most suitable treatment for individual patients taking into account the clinical history of each of them, as well as the specific biological characteristics of each form of cancer. Radiation therapy is used for tumors that have become resistant, do not respond to other forms of treatment, or are in areas where it would otherwise be difficult to intervene“.