To Fight Cancer, Know the Enemy

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/06/opinion/06watson.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=know%20the%20enemy&st=cse

- Hide quoted text -

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 10:50 AM
Subject: re: To Fight Cancer, Know the Enemy
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

As professor Watson points out "the inherent genetic instability of most cancer cells" is a great challenge. It means that the cancer which--in its youth--might have been destroyed by one drug targetting one driver can shrug off the same drug if treatment is delayed. This must shape strategy both in treating cancers and in researching new therapies. Currently, a novel anti-cancer therapy will be tried first in patients who have already failed established treatments. This means that their cancers are old, tough and probably use many drivers. In the last ten years we have probably discarded several drug candidates that would have been efficacious--even life-saving--in simple cancers, because they were defeated in this toughest clinical population.

Barry Levine