Cancer Treatment New and Improved

Cancer treatment has advanced tremendously in the last few decades. With more and better ways to stop the disease, doctors can give people the chance at long-term survival after diagnosis. As well, screening options for many types of cancer continue to improve. This allows for more cancers to be detected early, when they are most treatable and most likely to be cured.

Now comes news of a new method for determining the best way to treat many cancers. Researchers from the University of Virginia Health System have developed a way to rapidly sort through genetic information about each patient's tumor. The genetic and molecular characteristics of each tumor can then be used to determine a precise drug treatment that is most likely to be successful for each person.

Currently, many patients end up going through a sort of "trial and error" process as their doctors try one treatment after another, to figure out which one works best. This new method for quickly determining the best treatment options for each person, which is called COXEN (coexpression extrapolation), is providing hope that soon, people will be spared unnecessary treatments that aren't likely to help them anyway.

This brings us one step closer to truly personalized cancer care. Every cancer doctor wants to do whatever possible to get their patients the best treatments, with the least amount of side effects and unnecessary suffering. COXEN may offer a realistic way to begin doing this.