Cancer treatments should be revised, said Prof. Lodewijk Wessels of the section pattern recognition and bioinformatics (EEMCS faculty) during his inaugural speech on the 15th of March.
Wessels, who also works at the cancer research institute Antoni van Leeuwenhoek in Amsterdam, envisions a future in which people receive personalized cancer treatments. This is necessary, he believes, because cancers can be the result of a myriad of different genetic mutations and medicines usually only tackle cancers resulting from certain types of mutations.
“Systematic studies of the DNA code of tumours revealed that even tumours of the same type have vastly different genetic alterations”, Wessels said. “This variation explains the lack of effectiveness of therapies, but also implies that we cannot treat all tumours similarly.”
Researchers now want to tailor the treatment of each tumour based on its specific genetic alterations. Such treatments, which specifically target the alterations of the tumour, also hold the promise of only killing tumour cells, and hence reducing the burden of side effects on the patient.
Unfortunately though, according to Wessels, this approach rarely leads to complete eradication of the tumour due to the emergence of populations of tumour cells that are resistant to the treatment. “We have to move away from strategies that employ a single drug to target a single genetic alteration and move towards approaches that ‘think several steps ahead’, anticipating what the next strategic moves of the tumour cells will be.”
For this combinations of therapies may be needed, that not only block the major lifeline of tumour, but also anticipates and eliminates possible escape routes. Wessels: “This requires a detailed map of the biological and chemical circuitry of the cells as well as methodologies to navigate this map is such a way that we remain one step ahead of the tumour cells. Technologies for mapping out the circuitry are becoming increasingly accessible.”
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