During the State of the Union speech, President Barack Obama announced a government-funded cancer research initiative that will be a “moonshot” to cure cancer. This is welcome news for cancer specialists across the United States, as well as for people whose lives have been affected by cancer.
A key part of the initiative will be the creation of large databases of information about individual cancers, the genetic mutations they contain, the symptoms they cause and their response to treatment. Already, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) is nearing completion of the Genomic Data Commons, which will be able to hold data from as many as 50,000 patients and clinical trial participants. The American Society of Clinical Oncology is also creating a large database of information about individual cancers that will allow cancer researchers to identify effective treatments for the thousands of different kinds and variations of cancers.
It is ironic that cancer is experienced and treated one person at a time, but the future of cancer research is studying large groups of cancer patients one database at a time. Part of the explanation is the uniqueness of each person and each cancer. Careful study of common cancers like lung, breast and colon cancer has led to the identification of subtypes, which have nearly unfathomable names but refer to a specific biochemical process. In recent years, many specific new “targeted” cancer therapies have been developed for some of these new cancer subtypes, such as EGFR mutated lung cancer, Her2 overexpressed breast cancer and K-ras wild type colon cancer. Similarly, careful study of rare tumors has identified specific mutations and targets that have guided research into new cancer drugs and treatments for many types of cancer. From study of large numbers of cancer cases come treatments that help individuals with cancer.
In Greenville, we have been working closely with the NCI and contributing to NCI research and databases since the 1980s. It has been especially rewarding for us to see how research studies done over the past three decades continue to lead to improvements in cancer prevention and treatment today. In 2014, the NCI named the GHS Cancer Institute to be one of the 34 National Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP) sites. This has considerably elevated the degree and sophistication of our collaboration with the NCI and has positioned us to better contribute to the “big data” of cancer research and bring cutting-edge treatments to people living with cancer in South Carolina. To better serve cancer patients and to better study rare tumors, the GHS Cancer Institute opened the Rare Tumor Clinic in 2014. Here precise determinations of the molecular characteristics of rare tumors are studied to search for potential targeted therapies that have been discovered in analyses of large databases.
While we hope that the “moonshot” to cure cancer pays off, we recognize there will remain many people on earth and in our community living with the symptoms and challenges of cancer. Here, too, the NCI is conducting research into cancer care delivery, symptom control and quality of life – and Greenville is involved. The GHS Cancer Institute is conducting research to help reduce the side effects of therapy, relieve the fatigue that so commonly occurs with cancer and improve quality of life of cancer survivors. Our research includes innovative drugs and treatments, as well as integrative approaches, such as mindfulness meditation, heart rate variability biofeedback and acupuncture. This research is also connected to the larger efforts and databases of the NCI and will be part of the upcoming research initiatives, such as the recently announce “moonshot.”
In 2016, the science of cancer is advancing dramatically, and there is the very real likelihood that there will definite improvements in the prevention and treatment of cancer in the next few years. The cancer research initiative that President Obama has announced has great potential. We encourage our lawmakers to bring the “moonshot” to reality as the details are announced in the coming months.
This blog previously ran in The Greenville News on January 31, 2016.
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