The Scientific Outreach meeting organized by the academic research group on breast cancer SOLTI in Seville has focused on the future of breast cancer. Specifically, the researchers have pointed out that among the most important challenges in breast cancer in the short term, it is important to improve the situation of patients with triple negative tumors, reverse resistance and continue advancing in luminal B disease.
For all this, the tools that are positioned as outstanding are some such as the use of biomarkers to identify patients who will respond better to certain therapies. On these, Javier Salvador Bofill, head of the Medical Oncology service of the Virgen del Rocío Hospital, insisted that they will be key to “identify the patients who will benefit from therapeutic innovations and who can save a harmful exposure to medications that They do not need”.
Also, to continue improving knowledge about the molecular biology of tumors, especially those in which current therapies are not as effective, genomic platforms play a key role, as noted by SOLTI President Aleix Prat . It stated that “these platforms allow the analysis of a large amount of patient data long after obtaining the samples, and represent a key tool to advance clinical research while providing us with extremely useful information for the application of therapies aimed at combating genetic alterations, what is known as Precision Medicine ”. The role of immunotherapy to take advantage of the immunogenicity of some tumors has also been discussed.
CHRONOS-HOPE project
Meanwhile, Ana Casas, president of the Attitude Against Cancer Foundation and honorary member of the SOLTI Board of Directors, was advancing one of the projects of the SOLTI group, the CHRONOS-HOPE Project. Within it, an interactive online registry will be launched, designed “by and for patients, where they share their clinical and laboratory data with each other and with the researchers.
Since the meeting was held in Seville, there were precisely some of the data that are known in the region. In Andalusia alone, about 4,500 new cases of breast cancer are registered annually. Although it is difficult to make calculations, more than 20,000 women currently live in Andalusia with the diagnosis of breast cancer and, of these, about 3,000 live with advanced or metastatic breast cancer. Despite this, only 5 percent of breast cancer patients participate in clinical trials.
In this way, this new project has two parallel lines of work: the 'CHRONOS' project, which includes patients in early stage and high risk of recurrence, and the 'HOPE' project, which groups patients with breast cancer metastatic All of them are part of the SOLTI Formed Patients / Active Patients program. Casas explains that this training activity “facilitates quality information to help patients know better what clinical trials consist of” and thus increase their participation.