Cancer research has taken a new approach to treating cancer by specifically studying the immune system and how it can be trained to recognize and destroy cancer cells in the human body. Mount Sinai’s recent cancer research progress reflects a shift in oncology towards more precised and personalized patient treatment plans, especially after their recent studies on tumor genetics, immune cell behavior, and tumor microenvironment, researchers aim to discover the reasoning to why patients’ response to cancer treatment can vary so greatly and improve the designs of treatments. This type of approach in immune checkpoint inhibitors have already been incorporated in various types of cancer treatments.
Engineered cell therapies are seeing significant improvement. Mount Sinai scientists has been experimenting with Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell treatments specially, which are treatments that requires for a scientist to collect a type of immune cell from a patient’s blood to add additional genetic instructions to make the cell able of detecting specific types of cancer markers then inserted back into the patient after growing to larger amounts, effectively killing cancer cells with that specific marker. This treatment is mainly known for blood cancer treatments, and recent clinical trials have been targeting the effectiveness of modifying C.A.R. designs expanding to solid tumors.
“From what I’ve seen in the media and in general, cancer research has definitely evolved and improved over the last few years,” sophomore Elenor Li said.
Having access to large national and international database initiatives contribute greatly to cancer research as it helps researchers compare the patient results from genomic testing and fasten their search for finding the most common and significant mutations patients experience and also providing insights on what treatments are most effective.
A significant shift in the way researchers have been perceiving cancer, from viewing cancer as a disease of abnormal cells to a condition with much more complexity to the reasoning behind its formation. The role of the microbiome is being further explored in cancer treatment response as studies are showing that the bacteria in your gut does have an effect in the response a patient’s body gives to immunotherapy and chemotherapy, suggesting that cancer is influenced by the entire bodily system. Researchers are analyzing stool samples with treatment results to determine the connection between how adjusting the microbiome through antibiotics, diet and other methods can positively affect treatment outcomes.
Artificial intelligence tools are slowly being introduced to the medical space to aid in cancer research through the development of artificial intelligence tools to analyze medical images, electronic health records and pathology to double check the work human clinicians might miss, and using algorithms and pattern recognition techniques to help technicians rather than replacing them.
Population diversity is also being taken into account for treatment results as researchers are beginning to address and assess how socioeconomic factors, accessibility to care and race and impact a patient’s treatment and those disparities. Recognizing and identifying these gaps is one step that’s seemingly indirect but is significant in improving patient treatment outcomes overall to meet the different needs of a diverse population.
“Everyone deserves to be healthy,” senior Naomi Zarnighian said. “To take that away from someone just because they don’t have a ridiculous amount of money is immoral.”
Mount Sinai has expanded early phase trials to let patients gain access to experimental treatments that are not yet fully available at a wide scale, which help researchers gain important data that can help and support the advancement and improvement of the standard of care for cancer treatments in the future. The majority of these recent advancements made in cancer research are not singular breakthroughs but a result long term research and development.
