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Scientists from around the world discuss the latest advances in personalized cancer medicine

Around 300 cancer researchers from around the world are meeting this week in Barcelona at the international conference “Towards Personalized Cancer Medicine,” held at CosmoCaixa from May 18 to 21. Various experts, many of whom are considered to be leaders in the field, will present their work and recent findings with the common objective of discussing everything related to the individualized treatment of cancer. The congress, which is divided into six thematic units, was launched yesterday with the presentation of a series of papers on biology and cancer susceptibility.

Octavi Planells, Clara Cardona | 20 may 2010

Joan Massagué. Photo: IRB

The conference, jointly organized by Talència, the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS) and the Social Work program of la Caixa bank, aims to highlight the latest findings in cancer research and determine at what point medical science is at on the road to an individualized treatment of this disease. The oncologist Joan Massagué, Chair of the Cancer Biology and Genetics Program at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, and deputy director of the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Barcelona, moderated the first of the sessions, focusing on cancer biology and the processes that lead to the disease.

Speaking at a press conference, Massagué explained what personalized medicine for cancer consists of. The researcher began by saying that medicine in general has made steps to developing a personalized treatment based on a repertoire of drugs sufficiently well-defined that it allows relatively tight design treatments specific to the characteristics of each patient in each case. Yet with cancer this has not been possible “so far,” he said. “For cancer, we have very few varieties of chemotherapy, but with the emergence of a field of specific drugs and diagnostics that have become increasingly sophisticated, based on the genetics of the tumor and the individual, clinical treatment guidelines can be configured for each person.”

Cancer is a generic name that brings together more than a couple of hundred of diseases. At present time, medicine has reached an accurate diagnosis of some cancers and has been able to find specific medication for these cases. But there are few and far between. According to Massagué, only about six or eight cancers out of hundreds, but for him, the number is more than significant, “perhaps they are very few, expressed in relation to these cancer-specific diagnosis and medication, but they are a lot compared to what we had 10 years ago, when they were zero.” The goal is that eventually, within decades, chemotherapy and all its toxic effects are replaced with drugs “that you can take and not have your hair fall out,” he said.

On opening the conference, the expert stated that we are currently experiencing a golden age in cancer research, but we are still at the beginning of a process that will lead, not to a cure of the eradication of cancer, but rather to the point where cancer is considered “a normal illness” and the reduction or complete elimination of the contents in cancer cells is possible. For Massagué, “reducing or stopping the development of cancer is already a great success, as it is for all diseases; there is no cure for diabetes or cardiovascular disease but they can be controlled, held at bay, and that is what we call normalizing cancer.”

Cancer Genetics and Epigenetics

A second session focused on projects being carried out in the field of genetics and epigenetics (the study of gene expression) of cancer and some findings that could allow, among other things, for estimates of the susceptibility of patients to develop certain types of cancer. These guidelines would allow the patient to take preventive measures and for physicians to monitor the patient more closely.

Manuel Perucho, director of the Institute of Predictive and Personalized Medicine of Cancer (IMPPC) in Badalona, moderated the session due to his extensive research in this field. “In our institute, we specialize in so-called predictive medicine,” said Perucho on Monday after an intervention in the XI Symposium of the TV3 Marathon Foundation, which this year is focused on cancer research. The research efforts of the IMPPC are based on, among other aspects, the genomes of individuals which are studied in order to determine their susceptibility to certain cancers and therefore gain the advantage of acting preventively. “Now we have the technology for sequencing the whole genome or those most relevant parts,” said Perucho.

The search for the genetic and epigenetic bases of cancer processes can cast further light on the origins of the disease, the mechanisms by which alterations in the DNA sequence take place and how they are expressed in genes. According to Perucho, “mutations in normal cells accumulate, but they are not significant enough to cause cancer.” However, he clarified that the epigenetic mutations are more frequent due to the absence of a repair mechanism for these alterations. “In our research,” he continued, “we have seen a link between aging and the accumulation of epigenetic errors. This causes genetic mutations to occur in some individuals, and that can be the beginning of cancer.”

Manuel Perucho said that research should also focus on this point, on understanding exactly what is occurring with these alterations. In this regard, conferences like this one, which bring together researchers from around the world in Barcelona, help professionals to stay on the cutting edge of the relevant advances in research as well as to bring the latest discoveries to the public. But, most importantly, these meetings promote so-called “translational” research, the pooling of knowledge from basic clinical researchers and biologists, chemists, engineers, and professionals from different fields who have come together under the banner of making cancer just as treatable as any other disease.

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2 comments

publio santos 06/04/2011
estoy tratando de invwestigar sobre hemorroides.y que relacion tiene que ver con la prostata y el problema va ligado cuando se evacua y la constante sensacion de hormigueo .si es pòsible recibir inforamacion. comentario la pagina es exelente

Franz 17/02/2011
Me parece muy interesante esta iniciativa y más que al frente de ella este Joan Massagué, he leído mucho sobre él y su capacidad de trabajo. No soy científico, solo un ciudadano, que no hace mucho he tenido la desgracia de padecer en la familia esta terrible enfermedad. Escuchando los discursos por esta Web se me ha quedado la sensación terrible de lo lejos que estamos aún de solucionar este problema. Sobre Joan me ha parecido muy razonable todo lo que he escuchado, también muy sincero. Sobre lo que ha comentado Manuel Perucho, sobre el cáncer es lo que sueles escuchar más a menudo cuando buscas referencias sobre el cáncer. Me preocupa su pesimismo general, frases como "nunca curaremos el cáncer porque es algo que tenemos en nuestros genes" ó algo parecido ha dicho, me plateo una pregunta ¿de verdad creéis vosotros los científicos, que el cáncer lo engendramos nosotros? no será mas bien algún agente externo, bien químico ó bien un ser vivo (llámese virus, bacteria, hongo...ó lo que sea) que participa de esta mutación y expansión. Cuando escucho hablar que se tiene una solución pero que esta pasa por infinidad de efectos secundaros, me da la impresión que no se ha llegado a la solución correcta, solo se tiene la solución cuando se encajan bien todas las piezas, esto que parece una tontería, es posible que se este gastando ingenuas cantidades de dinero en investigar ciertos compuestos que no sirven directamente para nada, ya que su toxicidad supera a veces con creces a los resultados terapéuticos, pero me imagino que económicamente será bastante rentable.

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