Cancer Avatars for Personalized Medicine

They’re not blue and they’re not science fiction.  They are avatars, at least of the cancer kind.  From the hands of Dr. Sandeep Pingle, MD PhD from Moore’s Cancer Center in UC San Diego, CA comes computer representations of tumor cells.  Defined as an icon or figure representing a person, avatar is an appropriate term to describe the computer simulation modeling the genomic signatures of individual cancers and how they will respond to specific therapeutic interventions. 

In light of the recent discussions on how each tumor is unique and the need for personalized medicine, this newest discovery provides a tool for a comprehensive analysis of individual cancers.  Most importantly, it can be customized for each patient, allowing clinicians to treat patients selectively with drugs believed to have the greatest chance of success.

Thoughts so far . . .

Let’s recalibrate:

At the start of this blog, I had a clear goal: to share breaking cancer research in a manner that is easy to understand.  Who knew – it’s harder than it might seem!  The intricacies of cancer combined with the complicated technical jargon and methods make this task somewhat difficult, particularly if the goal is to break down the science into meaningful pieces of information without taking away from the science.

And so, I find that the beginnings of this blog has become more educational and perhaps more useful for entry-level students hoping to break into the cancer research field.  This information is still valuable for the general public and those merely curious about cancer and cancer research, but for them, it might take some slugging to get through the articles.

And so, I’m dividing this blog into two parts: one is basic informational posts about techniques or topics relevant to cancer, without focusing on newly published research; the other part will highlight new cancer research in a more newsy manner.  The former will be similar to what’s already been discussed, with more explanations and introductions to key players in the cancer field.  The latter section aims to highlight major findings without going into all the details.  My perspective on these topics can still be found in the “Where do we go from here” section.  You'll know by the title (Educational vs Research) where today's topic falls.

The combination of these two parts will hopefully give you, my readers, the information necessary to critical evaluate the science for yourself and to see the progress being made in the cancer research field.

This new direction is a challenge: a challenge for me to write in a clear, concise, and truthful manner; and a challenge to my readers to keep reading.  More than that, ask questions.  What do you want to know about?  Is a term or concept not understood? Do you disagree with my perspective?  With that, we can be assured we are in this endeavor together.