Precision Medicine in Oncology®

Founded in 1913 as a tuberculosis sanatorium, City of Hope today enjoys a reputation as a leading research, treatment, and education center for those with cancer, diabetes, and other life-threatening diseases.

Corey J. Langer, MD, from the Abramson Cancer Center, discusses the investigation of targeted therapies for patients with locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer.

The Trials in Progress section supplies summaries of ongoing research in a broad range of cancer types.

An interview with Elaine R. Mardis, PhD, discussing the clinical applications of genomic research on the near horizon that will enable more personalized therapy for patients at earlier stages of breast cancer.

The heterogeneity of lung tumors generates challenges in terms of the costs and logistics of developing targeted therapies, given that relatively few patients may harbor a particular mutation.

Jeffrey S. Weber, MD, PhD, specializes in cancer immunotherapy and has been involved in numerous trials of clinical drug development, vaccines, and studies on autoimmunity and melanoma.

A thorough personal and family history is the key to determining which patients are candidates for genetic counseling and testing.

D. Ross Camidge, MD, PhD, from the University of Colorado Cancer Center, discusses the ever changing and evolving world of clinical cancer research.

Though located far downstream of the extracellular trigger that initiates its signaling pathway, the MEK protein is no less significant a player in the cascade of events that promotes key cellular processes.

Antoni Ribas, MD, from the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses a phase I/II trial combining vemurafenib and ipilimumab for metastatic melanoma.

Novel formulations of specialty drugs have shifted the treatment of patients taking oncologic and biologic agents from infusion centers to the doctor's office.

An interview with Giorgio V. Scagliotti, MD, who has played a prominent role in researching and developing therapies to attack molecular targets.

A new supercomputer-based network will allow physicians to transfer and analyze genomic data more rapidly than standard methods.

Combining the new drugs dabrafenib and trametinib provided a clinically meaningful improvement in patients with melanoma that had BRAF V600 mutations.

Pretreatment serum lactate dehydrogenase is a prognostic factor in poor-risk patients with renal cell carcinoma and also a predictive factor for a survival benefit from treatment with temsirolimus.

A consortium of over 442 global investigators at 32 institutions recently reported results in over 30 publications of a decade of work from the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements project.

The application of molecular markers is already significantly improving the diagnosis of thyroid cancer and broader application could help prevent unnecessary surgeries to confirm the diagnosis.

Four histopathologic features of papillary microcarcinoma help predict how aggressive the tumor will be and subsequently how aggressive treatment must be to prevent its spread.

The availability of molecular agents that target oncogenic signaling pathways now offers the possibility of achieving disease stabilization in a proportion of patients with metastatic medullary thyroid cancer.

Trastuzumab has demonstrated activity in patients with B-cell adult acute lymphocytic leukemia who exhibit evidence of upregulation of the HER2 receptor.

Patients with refractory non-small cell lung cancer had a statistically significant improvement in PFS when treated with targeted therapy duo versus a single agent.

A common mutation in NSCLC confers resistance to tyrosine kinase inhibitors and worsens survival, creating a need for an alternative approach to treating the subgroup of patients with the mutation.

Dr. David Gandara from the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center on Patient Selection for Molecular Testing in Lung Cancer

The Trials in Progress Poster Session at the ASCO Annual Meeting, now in its third year, is intended to stimulate discussion in the oncology community about ongoing clinical trials and to promote collaboration.

Siteman patients have access to more than 250 therapeutic clinical trials, and Siteman-affiliated scientists and physicians hold more than $165 million in annual cancer research and related training grants.