New Drugs, Novel Combos Set To Tackle Cancer

By Patricia Reaney

LONDON, Oct 18, 2001 (Reuters) - New drugs, novel combinations of existing therapies and advances in detecting and understanding tumours will be the focus of the European Cancer Conference in Portugal next week.

Thousands of doctors, surgeons, oncologists and other medical experts are expected to attend the five-day meeting, the largest cancer conference held outside the United States.

Although last month"s attacks on the United States and the bombings in Afghanistan have cast a cloud over the event and led to cancellations, organisers said there were never any plans to cancel the meeting or scale it down.

"We"ve made arrangements with speakers not willing to come to have someone in Europe give a presentation using their materials," said Professor Harry Bartelink of the Netherlands Cancer Institute and a member of the Federation of European Cancer Societies which is organising the event.

Despite better knowledge of the causes of cancer and improvements in detection and treatment, cancer killed 6.2 million people worldwide last year, more than a million more than a decade earlier.

Lung, stomach, liver, colorectal, breast and prostate are the most common cancers. Liver, lung and pancreatic cancers are the deadliest.

PREDICTING THE COURSE OF DISEASE

Bartelink said new data from a major trial of a new breast cancer treatment will be presented at the meeting, along with the latest on microarray, or gene chip technology, a technique to detect cancerous tumours and the best treatments for them.

Microarray takes a microchip covered with thousands of genes from a sample of the tumour to find the master controls or "on-off" switches for the cancer.

"With it (the technique) it is possible to predict the course of the disease of a patient," said Bartelink.

Patients with early breast cancer have a good prognosis but in an estimated 20 percent of patients the disease will spread. Microarray helps to identify patients whose tumours are most likely to spread and who should have chemotherapy or other treatment.

"With this microarray you can see this," said Bartelink.

A new surgical technique which dramatically reduced recurrence rates in patients suffering from rectal cancer will also be unveiled at the Lisbon meeting which starts October 21.

Reworking standard treatments and anti-cancer drugs in new combinations to outsmart cancer will also feature prominently, along with new therapies and so-called "smart bomb" drugs that target cancer cells but spare healthy ones.

"There will be a lot of presentations on new drugs that are based on their mechanism of action," Bartelink promised.

He predicts the treatment of cancer will be revolutionised in the near future thanks to the sequencing of the human genome and other scientific advances.

"In the coming decades it will be completely different. You will know exactly the characteristics of the tumour and based upon that you will decide the drug for the patient."


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