Scientists in London have announced that they are creating a new generation of innovative cancer therapies, known as ‘anti-evolution’, in a bid to combat the disease’s ability to evade treatment.
Experts from the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust are working on a strategy called ‘Making the discoveries: our strategy to defeat cancer’ to move forward in the fight against cancer.
Overcoming cancer evolution
Cancer cells are evolving to resist drugs aimed at fighting them in the same way that bacteria have adapted to resist antibiotic treatment in what scientists call ‘survival of the nastiest’. This means drugs that were once effective are now beginning to stop working, leading to patient relapse. It is always a good idea to get a Patient Recruitment Services found at sites like www.richmondpharmacology.com/specialist-services/patient-recruitment to trial certain medicines or drugs especially when it comes to something like cancer.
Thanks to advances in DNA sequencing and genetics, doctors now believe that new drugs can be developed and that they can use advance immunotherapy to help patients’ immune systems to deal with changes in the cancer.
On Friday 22 July 2016, the ICR and Royal Marsden team committed to a new roadmap for overcoming these changes and to delivering strong evidence on innovative cancer treatment through state-of-the-art clinical trials.
This will mean that a range of clinical staff are needed to carry out the trials and begin the task of predicting how cancers evolve so that they can be tackled with new anti-evolution drugs.
Future fight
The project is a completely new approach and the first of its kind to tackle the need to fight the evolution of cancer and stop tumour cells developing resistance to treatment.
Scientists realise the importance of looking at ways of anticipating cancer evolution and overcoming it if they are to treat patients effectively in future.
According to ICR chief executive Professor Paul Workman, the new joint research strategy “fires the starting gun on a race against cancer evolution, as we aim to predict the disease’s behaviour in order to stay one step ahead.”
Over the next five years, the ICR will work on discovering a new drug and a new immunotherapy that could be as effective in transforming patients’ lives as other drugs it has developed.
