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From Dr. Nagourney, medical and laboratory director
Every cancer patient has questions, no matter what the diagnosis: Can I be cured? Which are the most active and least toxic treatments for me? Is further chemotherapy likely to be beneficial? Many of these questions can be better addressed with the use of objective, scientific, personalized information in the form of functional profiles. We see the role for "rational therapeutics" in each of these situations.
For those patients with curable malignancies (primarily leukemia, lymphoma, early stage solid tumors), intelligent application of drug treatments can identify the most effective (possibly curative) therapy from comparable choices. For patients with drug sensitive diseases such as breast, ovarian and many lung cancers, the principal issue is selection of the most effective and least toxic therapy from amongst comparable choices.
For patients with more drug resistant tumors (melanomas, kidney cancer, GI neoplasms), the question answered may not be which chemotherapy, but instead, whether or not chemotherapy is likely to be of benefit. And this may be a similar situation for those patients who have been heavily pretreated and need to know if their tumors have developed drug resistance.
As you can see, there are many unanswered questions for which there are many appropriate applications for the EVA-PCD functional profile.
From Shari Burt, director, patient/physician relations
Often, in speaking with patients, I hear that their oncologist is giving them a choice of two or three different treatment options. They don't know whether they will work, cannot guarantee that they will work, and if they don't work, will then move to the next option. How is a patient to choose? How is an oncologist to choose?
Anytime a patient is facing chemotherapy, there are many comparable choices, and these choices should not be made lightly or with a flip of a coin.
Our role at Rational Therapeutics is to add scientific rationale to why one drug combination is preferred over another. Each patient is unique and brings with them their own genetic background, environmental exposures and personal lifestyle which can uniquely affect tumor cell death or survival. We cannot replicate the patient's entire body, but we can identify in vitro what therapies induce the patient's tumor to undergo programmed cell death. Some diseases are highly sensitive to chemotherapeutics; others may be more resistant, but our goal is always the same: To help patient's receive the most effective, least toxic treatment based on their unique tumor.
There is no second chance to get the right first treatment.
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Many of you were kind enough to respond to our recent survey. In addition to website feedback, we received many comments about what you'd like to see in this newsletter. We thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts. We will cover many of the topics suggested throughout the course of this coming year, beginning today. (See article on "Why Come to RT?")
