2016/01/12

Designing a broad-spectrum integrative approach for cancer prevention and treatment.

While current therapies have achieved modest successes in some cancers, significant problems remain with most of our approaches to treatment. In particular, many newer targeted therapies are extremely expensive, highly toxic and not effective for rare types of cancer and advanced cancers. Even when they appear to work, a significant percentage of patients will experience a relapse after only a few months. Typically advanced cancers are untreatable and relapses occur when small subpopulations of mutated cells become resistant to therapy. Doctors who try to address this problem with combinations of therapies find that therapeutic toxicity typically limits their ability to stop many cancers.

A large international group of 180 scientists from prominent institutions in 22 countries including the Metabolomics Unit Laboratory 2 leading by Malu Martinez Chantar in CIC bioGUNE operating under the name of "The Halifax Project," sponsored by a non-profit organization, Getting To Know Cancer have been the responsible to the present review in Semin Cancer Biol. 2015 Dec;35 Suppl:S276-304. doi: 10.1016/j.semcancer.2015.09.007.

This capstone paper is the result of a substantial effort to present a conceptual framework for new approaches to cancer prevention and therapeutics.