The greatest hope and the strongest shield we have against cancer today is personalized medicine, said Thanos Dimopoulos, Rector of EKPA, in an online speech at an event of the Institute of Public Health of the American College of Greece in view of the 4th World Cup. February.
The data show that cancer showed an increasing trend during 2021, with 2.7 million new cases and 1.3 million deaths worldwide. This is to be expected, according to Mr. Dimopoulos, since we live much longer and therefore with age the chances of a gene mutation increase.
In Greece, for the year 2020, more than 62,000 new diagnoses and 33,000 deaths were recorded.
The most common cancers in women are: breast (29%), colon (12%), lung (8%), endometrial (8%), pancreatic (4%) and in men, cancer lung (19%), prostate (18%), bladder (14%), colon (13%), and pancreas (4%).
“Cancer is an extremely heterogeneous disease, to such an extent that even tumors that come from the same organ can also be heterogeneous,” Dimopoulos said. It is time, therefore, he noted, to move away from the standardized and undifferentiated approaches – according to which all patients with the same neoplasm receive the same treatment – and to turn to the individualization of treatment options. By “Precision Medicine” we mean this form of medicine that uses information from genomics, proteomics and the environment to prevent, diagnose and treat a particular disease. It is therefore urgent to identify clinical, pathological and genomic markers that can guide treatment options.
Mr. Dimopoulos stated that the technological progress in imaging and molecular diagnostics has significantly contributed to the development of personalized medicine. The aim is to identify the most effective approaches based on genetic and environmental factors, as well as the lifestyle of each patient. Necessary tools for precision medicine are functional imaging, molecular pathology, guided therapy based on specific genomic mutations, molecular platforms and histological biomarkers.
Personalized medicine is the most important component in the future treatment of oncology patients, underlined the rector of EKPA.
The development of oncology registries is also considered important to improve treatment and prognosis. These registers help in the identification of high-risk patients, in the early diagnosis and treatment, in the evaluation of the quality of life, etc. There are 200 such registries in Europe, while in our country the relevant political decision has not been made yet. “A central planning is needed at the political level, which would help attract investment, which is necessary for both the creation of infrastructure and the training of human resources,” the rector commented.
“Leapfrog developments in medicine open new horizons every day, in terms of cancer treatment,” said the director of the Institute of Public Health of the American College of Greece, Panagiotis Behrakis. “Cancer has now taken the form of a chronic disease. We do not die from it. We live with her. It is not the … triskataratos disease but a disease like all. Serious but manageable – with proper prevention, diagnosis and treatment “.
Finally, he pointed out the now unquestionable link between smoking and lung cancer, which is the most aggressive but also the one with the most diagnoses. To be precise, it has been found that 20% of lung cancer cases are due to smoking. Mr. Behrakis then referred to the updated screening guidelines for lung cancer that they recommend to all smokers 50-80 years old who have a long history in their past, eg one pack a day for twenty years (even to former smokers who quit the last one). 15 years), to do an annual low-dose chest CT scan. The effectiveness of this type of preventive control contributes to the drastic reduction of deaths by 20% -30%.
Finally, it was pointed out that the chances of developing the disease can be reduced if we pay attention to our diet (especially red meat and sugar), quit smoking and exercise regularly.
Both Mr. Dimopoulos and Mr. Behrakis summed up by expressing their optimism for the future of personalized medicine as well as for the spectacular possibilities that technology now offers in terms of discovering new methods of treating cancer.
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