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Hello, my name is Chris Walko
and I am a personalized medicine specialist
at Moffitt Cancer Center
in Tampa, Florida in the United States.
And today we're going to be discussing
the treatment paradigms
used to treat cancer
and I'm going to aim to provide
an overview of key considerations
for cancer pharmacotherapies.
I've worked in the oncology realm
for more than 10 years
as a pharmacist
and a clinical pharmacist and an educator
and now my role is actually
in chairing a Molecular Tumor Board
and helping to use cancer genetics
to personalize therapy
in direct treatment.
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So I'm really excited to see
how we translate
all of what we've learned over the years
and throughout this lecture
we're going to talk a little bit
about the history
of how we've treated cancer
and ultimately end up with
kind of where we are today
with the targeted therapies intermixed
with the cytotoxic therapies
and the immunotherapies.
So we will review
this different treatment modalities
used to treat cancer in this section
including both local therapy,
so radiation and surgery
as well as systemic therapies.
And we will also begin to delve
into the newer targeted therapies
and the immunotherapies as I said.
This lecture is meant
to provide an overview
that will be further translated
into specific malignancies
in the subsequent learning module.
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Initial cancer workup of solid tumors
includes imaging
that will help
with the staging of cancer, ascertain
if it is localized or if it is metastatic
and whether it has spread
to distant organs.
Hematologic tumors
are staged differently
given that it's the neoplastic cells
that are in the blood and the lymph nodes
and bone marrow biopsy is typically used
to provide a diagnosis in these situations.
The specific pathologic diagnosis
and extent of the disease
will help to frame our treatment goals.
The goal of localized cancer therapy
is typically to cure
whereas cancers that have spread
to different organs may not be curable.
So treatment aims are to control
disease growth and symptoms
while also maximizing quality of life.
Since this module is an overview,
generalities are going to be made
but there are always exceptions.
Some cancers are still curable
even when metastatic.
Testicular cancer
is a great example of this
if you remember the story
of Lance Armstrong
who did have testicular cancer
that had gone to multiple areas
of his body including his brain.
It's a very responsive cancer
to chemotherapy
and so, therefore, it can be cured,
so there are exceptions,
but we're going to be talking in general
and then the different disease modules
after this will go
into more specific details.
