We have a new vision for cancer care. The goal of Next Generation Oncology is to decentralize cancer care from large quaternary medical care centers to regional cancers centers. To be able to do so, clinical oncologists practicing at these regional centers must be empowered using technology, new clinical workflows, access to next generation sequencing and proteomic analysis.
Cancer therapy also has to become less toxic, so there is no need for tertiary hospitals and intensive care units. This is the reason why more and more clinicians use low dose continuous chemotherapy – often called metronomic chemotherapy. In recent years, this therapy is being combined with targeted therapies selected on the basis of individual patient’s biologic profile – aiomic. This biologic profile is determined by merging DNA mutation, RNA transcription activation and protein information to identify those genes/proteins most active in the patient’s cancer progression.
A very important component for decreasing the toxicity of future therapies is improving the delivery of these drugs directly to the tumor. Present chemotherapy is given either systemically (i.e. it is distributed throughout the body) and only small portion of the drug reaches the tumor. A number of methods is being investigated for direct tumor delivery – nanoparticles, bi-specific antibodies, homing sequences). We have developed a new methodology of using the natural ability of platelets to home to cancer site for direct cancer delivery of drugs.