Cancer immunotherapy, and in particular immune checkpoint blockade, has transformed oncology with the potential for durable responses even in patients with metastatic disease. To date, regulatory approvals and clinical trials have focused on the study of these agents in relatively more common tumor types, such as melanoma, non-small cell lung cancer, bladder cancer, and kidney cancer, amongst others.
Could diet and exercise really cure breast cancer?
Diversity is to be celebrated in our society as enriching our experiences, our cultures and the richness of our lives. Diversity within the context of cancer care and research has appropriately grown to include considerations of diversity of race, ethnic heritage, age, gender, and experiences.
Imagine a hospital ward 100 years from now. Will multi-drug resistant infections be as prominent as they are today? I suspect so, because as antibiotics evolve, so will the infectious diseases they target. It's an arms race in which both sides have a capacity to learn and adapt. Not so cancer. Cancers can't learn from each other. But cancer patients can. This profound imbalance in the capacity for learning is an advantage that all cancer patients share. It is our super power. And we barely use it.
Despite the many advances in oncology, important problems continue to beset the field, including rapidly rising costs, uneven patterns of care, and poor access to (and participation in) cancer trials. A model that has been recently developed and tested to address these issues is the so-called academic hybrid community cancer center.
As a cancer patient advocacy organization—especially one dedicated to a category of malignancies that have seen frustratingly slow progress and only negligible improvements in survival rates over the past four-plus decades—we've come to view our role and responsibility to the brain tumor community as something like that of a plumber.
Systemic therapies for metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) have expanded dramatically over the past 3 years.
