The Importance Of Genetic Advancements In Oncology

Cancer is a genetic disease caused by certain changes to genes that control the way our cells function, especially how they grow and divide. Genes carry the instructions to make proteins, which do much of the work in our cells. Certain gene changes can cause cells to evade normal growth controls and become cancer. Genetic changes that promote cancer can be inherited from our parents if the changes are present in germ cells, which are the reproductive cells of the body (eggs and sperm). Such changes, called germline changes, are found in every cell of the offspring. In general, cancer cells have more genetic changes than normal cells. But each person’s cancer has a unique combination of genetic alterations.

As I compared the British Medical Journal and the guardian, all relative information must be relayed throughout the document. All research shown in the BMJ was fully factual evidence based upon the experiment. The

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We’ve all heard about the elusive cure for cancer. But cancer in itself isn’t just one specific disease:

Ioannidis also noted that 11 of these studies have never been retested (Para 25). These studies include research on heart disease, high blood pressure and use of hormone-replacement therapy for menopausal women (Para 14). The author informs his audience that with this knowing this shocking information, we should simply ignore most prominent and distinguished nutritional recommendations (Para 17). Links between genes and various diseases and traits are often exaggerated in the media for popular remedy and do it yourself treatments (Para 21). Freedman (2010) shares a statement from Ioannidis “ It’s like an epidemic, in the sense that they’re infected with these wrong ideas and they are spreading it to other researchers through journals” (Para 22). Individuals may think that peer review detects biased or false information however, most of this information slips through the cracks with giving peer review a low assurance of accuracy (Para 23). Unfortunately, university and government research rarely jumps in to implement high research standards to avoid these issues (Para

“I wish we could get up one day, summon everyone and say we’ve cured the disease, but it’s just not going to happen”(Bettelheim). These grim words speak loudly to anyone who has faced or facing this horrible disease. The diagnosis of cancer is one that is hard for anyone to absorb; knowing they have a long journey ahead of them filled with trying times and dark days. To someone facing this horrible disease the only comfort they have is the use of an outdated unsuccessful treatment practice of chemo therapy. Research shows that chemo therapy is ineffective for the treatment of cancer based of the statistical survival rate, harmful and lasting effects on the body, and the breakthrough of new research and treatment.

Cancer diseases are a collection of heterogeneous disease entities, which differ substantially in clinical outcomes and risks with respect to genetic factors, environmental factors, and clinical characteristics such as age, gender, etc. Certain therapy can benefit one subgroup in survival, but maybe ineffective for another subgroup.

Genomic heterogeneity and its effects on cancer therapeutic agents are very important, So that genotype differences potentially establish a necessary basis for sensitivity of drug differences between established cancer cell lines and primary tumor cells.

I, as a member on this institutional review board, have decided to approve the request made by Dr. Beringer, Dr. Haslet, and Dr. Haslet’s team of researchers to continue their clinical trials. The study, as brought before the board, appears to satisfy the criteria needed for approval. This criteria includes, but is certainly not limited to, the minimization of possible risks for research subjects, risks are relatively reasonable when compared to the anticipated benefits, subject selection is equitable, and the research subject provides an informed and voluntary consent to the study in its entirety.

In contrast to a decade ago, we’ve seen an explosion of new drugs and virtually all of these drugs are targeted therapies. The substantial increase in the transition of FDA approvals from standard chemotherapeutics to targeted therapies is also equally astounding (Martino et al., 2015). The traditional chemotherapeutic agents are simply not being developed with the same frequency by drug companies any more. While chemotherapeutics have had a real impact and in some diseases a dramatic impact, for most common solid tumours, these impacts have been minimal. Moreover, standard chemotherapy often results in collateral damage to healthy cells causing unwanted side effects while targeted therapies are associated with fewer and less toxic side

Because of the great variance in malignant neoplasms (the cause of cancer), research has not been great enough to save the

Patients at early stages of cancer, pre metastasis, can often be cured by surgically removing the tumor. On the other hand, Patients with progressed cancer, which has metastasized, must be treated with systemic therapies. Common therapies used today are radiation and chemotherapy. Although in some cases these treatments are effective in removing tumors, they are not entirely selective towards cells within the tumor and are toxic to the patient. A relatively new approach towards cancer treatment is targeted therapy; drugs which inhibit specific molecules involved in tumor development. These drugs are more specific towards tumor cells and less damaging to normal cells [R]. Although Initial therapeutic responses to targeted therapy drugs are promising, many patients will experience regrowth and progression of the tumor within several months following treatment [R, A]. Typical detectable metastatic lesions are expected to contain hundreds of cells resistant to the drug before the start of treatment. These cells would then expand during treatment, repopulate the tumor, and cause treatment failure [R]. Along with preexisting mutations, these targeted therapies put massive selective pressures on the diverse cell populations of the tumor which drive the tumor cells by natural selection to select mutations that cause resistance. This resistance could result from several different processes of which genetic alternation in the drug targets and development of

Nonetheless, an analysis conducted by Bailar and Gornik evaluated the overall progress against cancer from 1970 through 1994 by examining mortality rates [2]. The analysis concluded that the effect of new treatments for cancer has not shown any major sign of improvement, regardless of 40 years of research [2]. While this conclusion remains less supportive of the hypothesis, the fact that after a substantial amount of research majority of deaths in the United States are still due to cancer, certainly adds some validity to Bailar and Gornik’s

Cancer is difficult. A phrase a parent may utter to quench a child’s curiosity, but it many ways that simple phrase best exemplifies the disease. Albeit from different prospectives, both patients and researchers struggle to deal with cancer, and dealing with it in clinical trials also poses challenges. The deadly nature of cancer introduces additional ethical dilemmas that make the best course of action anything but obvious. One of the biggest ethical issues revolves around the use of placebos for these patients, and thus it questions whether we should alter the typical protocol for clinical trials when dealing with cancer patients. The initial phase of any clinical trial stresses safety of the treatment, but one could argue that the conventional

One of the biggest challenges in drug research— or in any field—is to let go of ideas that are no longer promising and to move on to brighter prospects that aren’t being given enough attention. When new hire Lee Babiss arrived from archrival Glaxo to head preclinical research, he preached a simple message: Fail fast. He knew that the best hope of finding the right new drugs was to spend less time on dead-ends. Screening was needed to sift though