According to a story from HSC News, Dr. Peter Kuhn from the University of South Carolina (USC) is developing a navigational tool that aims to personalize treatment based on a patient’s genetic profile and help guide caregivers towards the approaches that will work the most effectively for each individual patient. The new mechanism would be useful for both common and rare types of cancer.
Collaboration with the FDA
As a sign of the tool’s promise, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has decided to work with Dr. Kuhn. Current work involves the development of models that would be able to predict how breast cancer would respond to different types of therapy. He has also received a grant for multiple myeloma research. The research is also rather personal for Dr. Kuhn, as his mother also faced a breast cancer diagnosis in the past.
Better Outcomes
Ultimately, Dr. Kuhn says that the primary goal is better treatment outcomes for patients. The decision to give a cancer patient a certain treatment is mostly based on how the general patient population has responded. This imprecise approach could be greatly improved. A program that could perform a calculation based on individual patient data could allow for a patient to begin the most effective, safe, and powerful treatment from the start. This tool would mean that doctors and patients would no longer have to waste time trying different treatments, and patients that may not respond as well to the typical run-of-the-mill approach could begin a more effective treatment plan earlier.
The breast cancer project will have access to data from FDA records, which will be used for analysis to develop algorithms that could generate the models necessary to make the new tool a possibility. The FDA will also help Dr. Kuhn refine the mapping tool to make sure that it is successful.
Multiple Myeloma Mysteries
Dr. Kuhn is also working to develop a way to more accurately predict who is at risk for developing multiple myeloma. This research will start with analyzing monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS), a condition that can be a precursor to multiple myeloma. However, everyone with MGUS does not get cancer. Dr. Kuhn hopes to find out why.
