Personalized cancer treatment: genetic profiling
New treatment methods are being developed for cancer. Success in cancer treatment increases with each new step in the medical field.
Prof. Dr. Nil Molinas Mandel said that genetic testing has revolutionized cancer treatment. With “genetic profiling” personalized treatments can be created.
At the symposium held last week in Istanbul, with the support of US biotechnology company Illumina and hosted by the Generations Genetic Diseases Evaluation Center, the world of genetics and oncology experts gathered to understand the place of genetics developments in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Heidelberg University Pathology Institute, one of the world’s most powerful institutes in the research and development of biomarkers and molecular diagnosis. The scientific meeting that brought together Daniel Kazdal and Turkish oncology experts discussed the difference made by comprehensive molecular profiling in cancer and the latest scientific advances in cancer biomarkers.
The moderator of the meeting, Prof. Dr. Nil Molinas Mandel noted that a great revolution has taken place in the field of cancer with the advancements in genetics and biotechnology, and emphasized that the world of oncology is no longer concerned with cancer according to their type, but according to the patient’s molecular mechanism, and provided important information.
“WE NOW APPLY BOUTIQUE TREATMENT”
prof. dr. “Cancer is the most feared disease of our century. But there is a lot of innovation in the cancer field. Great advances and new horizons have emerged in tracking the course of the disease, including the genetic structures, molecular characteristics of the disease and patients, and tumor cells circulating in the blood at different stages, what we call the discoveries of the century can name. We tell each other that ‘it was the clothes we used to make’. Now we work ’boutique’; We plan personalized treatments and in order to perform the treatments we have planned specifically for this person, we want to show if there is a mutation that causes this. That is why we do molecular tests with samples from cancer tissue and, if that is not enough, samples from blood. “It’s almost inevitable now for any cancer,” he said.
“WE CAN NOW SURVIVE PATIENTS FOR YEARS”
Emphasizing that genetic profiling could initially be done for two genes and three genes, advancements in genetics now allow hundreds of mutations to be viewed with newly developed molecular gene panels. Dr. Mandel continued his words as follows: “This is the exciting part of the job. Because sometimes, as a result of molecular profiling done on a patient who seems to be resistant to everything, we see that the causative mutations that we call driver or “driver mutation” that we never expected can be adopted and the treatment and the program of the disease can change completely. Nowadays there have been very important developments in the field of lung cancer, breast cancer or colorectal cancer, which are the most common cancers. We have now started giving more effective treatments with fewer side effects. We used to not be able to do much about ovarian cancer. We just gave standard chemotherapy. Then came the targeted treatments, and then studies that disrupted and stopped DNA repair mechanisms showed that new treatment options are now extremely important in ovarian cancer. While the 1-year survival rate in metastatic patients is very low, today this period has increased to 4-5 years. More recent mutational analyzes also gave us the opportunity to reveal different drug options in resistant patients. Many new mutations have also been identified in breast cancer. We used to call it Her-2 positive disease, now Her-2 low positives came out. As a result, treatment options have also increased.”