Engineering Cancer Treatment

While we plow through our daily routines, remarkable work is underway in medical research labs across the country. Researchers in those labs are working on solutions to challenges that disrupt our daily routines. If you or a loved one is has undergone cancer treatment, you know that one of those challenges to your daily routine is the painful side effects of chemotherapy.

Chemo can cause peripheral neuropathy; damage to nerves in the arms, legs, hands and feet. Sensation and movement in these areas can become agonizing in some patients. Researchers at Purdue University are exploring why this occurs in some patients but not others. Chris Adams reports that these researchers are studying patient data to “develop methods to better predict which patients will have side effects from specific chemotherapy drugs” and determine if certain biomarkers (molecules found in one’s blood or tissue) are linked to chemotherapy-induced pain. Precision medicine efforts, like this one, that link the presence of biomarkers to the occurrence of such pain could better predict which patients will have painful side effects from specific chemotherapy drugs. If and when a link is discovered, treatment can be reengineered to remedy cancer while minimizing the severity of side effects.

Research like this underscores that cancer treatment continues to advance beyond one-size-fits all. In order to tackle a cancer diagnosis, individual patients need the right medication for them, at the right time. For this reason, Patients and Providers United amplifies the voices that seek to keep patients and providers at the center of medical decision making. Putting a middleman, with inadequate clinical experience in the medical decision making chain undoubtedly disrupts the personalized treatment plans that physicians carefully develop for each patient and restricts real-time decision making by doctors.