Precision Cancer Medicine Improving Outcomes Through Gene-Based Treatment Plans

Through precision cancer medicine, doctors at Ohio State are working with each patient to craft personalized treatment plans.

“If we can identify some of the tricks cancer is pulling to grow and travel or to hide from the immune system, we can leverage that to flip the switch and help the immune system find the cancer cells,” Sameek Roychowdhury, MD, PhD, says.

Precision cancer medicine is the concept of personalizing each patient’s cancer treatment based on the genetic makeup of their disease. “This is not a new idea,” Roychowdhury explains, adding that the “explosion” of methods of understanding the genetic makeup of patients’ cancer cells and tumors has “allowed us to look at treatment in a whole new way.”

Roychowdhury and his lab are at the forefront of precision cancer medicine, and have developed several clinical trials that are extending the lives of patients with metastatic cancer. “Making these discoveries is challenging — like pulling a needle from a haystack,” he says. “But it’s happening again and again in research, genomics is driving that process, along with big data analysis, that lead to new therapies that benefit patients.”

The fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR) is one of the areas the Roychowdhury Lab focuses on, and they have developed ways to “turn off” this mutation, which causes cancer cells to grow out of control and hide from the immune system.

“In the past two years, we’ve seen two different drugs approved because of these clinical trials,” Roychowdhury says. “Our goal is to identify a new gen or target every year. We want to do research that is fundamentally sound, and we want it to help people tomorrow, not just 10 years from now.”