My Health
Personalized Medicine and its Impact on Cancer Care
By Dr Allan Njau and Dr Jonathan Wawire, Molecular Pathologist and Anatomical Pathologist, respectively, at Aga Khan University Hospital, Nairobi.
Newer forms of cancer treatment are emerging, and some are already in use. What is personalized medicine in the context of cancer?
Dr. Jonathan Wawire
Dr. Allan Njau
If you have a symptom, or a screening test result that suggests you have cancer, your doctor will order lab and/or imaging tests to confirm that it is indeed cancer and if yes, the type of cancer and the stage of the disease. Beyond confirming the type of cancer, laboratory medicine has grown to enable your doctor offer personalised treatment. In this article, we unpack personalised treatment and its impact on cancer care.
Personalized medicine or precision medicine involves formulating disease treatment or prevention plans while considering the differences in individuals which may be determined by their genes, lifestyles and the abnormal genes that initiate or drive cancer growth in a particular individual. The aim is to find the best available treatment at the right time for the right individual. In other words; individuals are not the same, cancers are not the same, hence treatment should not be the same for each patient even with the same type of cancer. Some of the benefits of personalised medicine include, fewer side effects, greater efficacy, meaning better treatment outcome and better quality of life.
What are the traditional or conventional Is personalised medicine the same as forms of cancer treatment? targeted therapy? Surgery is an important element in cancer treatment, this may involve total or partial removal of the cancer, however, not all cancer types are treated using surgery. In addition, in cases where the cancer has spread widely, it may not be safe or possible to operate. Chemotherapy on the other hand, typically involves a combination of drugs which kill the cancer cells given before and/or after surgery or even without surgery. Radiotherapy uses high energy radiation to kill the cancer cells. Surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy are often combined. The use of chemotherapy and radiotherapy may be limited by the fact that normal, non-cancerous cells are normally affected or even killed in the process, “collateral damage”.
Targeted therapy falls under personalized medicine. In targeted cancer therapy, uniquely designed drugs, hormones or antibodies are used to block the genes or proteins “molecular targets” that drive cancer growth and spread.
9 TT 138 | FEB 1st - 6th | 2022
