{"id":17022,"date":"2023-04-13T09:41:24","date_gmt":"2023-04-13T09:41:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sygnaturediscovery.com\/blog\/shaping-the-future-of-lung-cancer-treatment\/"},"modified":"2023-04-13T09:41:24","modified_gmt":"2023-04-13T09:41:24","slug":"shaping-the-future-of-lung-cancer-treatment","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.sygnaturediscovery.com\/fr\/blog\/shaping-the-future-of-lung-cancer-treatment\/","title":{"rendered":"Shaping the Future of Lung Cancer Treatment"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 12th<\/sup> of April is a landmark day each year for our VP of Oncology Drug Discovery, Dr Allan Jordan.\u00a0 But will it become a landmark day for cancer research? He shares his thoughts below\u2026<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

What\u2019s so special about April 12th?<\/h2>\n

Yesterday was the 12th<\/sup> of April, which is always a significant day on the calendar for me.\u00a0 As a self-confessed space nerd, the International Day of Human Spaceflight is a day always worth a small commemoration.\u00a0 Sixty-two years ago, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to reach orbit, opening the doors to the cosmos.\u00a0 Exactly twenty years later, the US Space Shuttle made its maiden flight.\u00a0 It was Gagarin\u2019s first flight that accelerated the nascent Space Race, leading to the first moon landing and, later, cooperative ventures such as the International Space Station.\u00a0 In my science engagement talks on cancer, the topic of \u201cWhy can we land on the moon but not cure cancer?\u201d is a frequent talking point (as discussed here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

So, it seems fitting that it was yesterday that the results of another hugely complex collaborative venture were released in seven publications across Nature and Nature Medicine<\/a>.\u00a0 The TRACERx<\/a> [Tracking non-small cell lung Cancer Evolution through Therapy (Rx) ] project, coordinated by Professor Charles Swanton at the Francis Crick Institute, has now disclosed its findings after a seven-year exploration of the evolution of lung cancer.\u00a0 The most complex and in-depth investigation of cancer evolution to date, these studies allow us to get a much better understanding of how tumours evolve, evade therapies and disseminate around the body.<\/p>\n

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Charting new trajectories<\/h2>\n

Several years ago, in a talk at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR<\/a>) Annual Meeting in 2014, I recall Bert Vogelstein describing the complex heterogeneity of cancer and discussing the complexities, and opportunities, this offered for novel cancer therapeutics.\u00a0 This new study further details evolutionary heterogeneity, specifically in lung cancer, but the findings are highly likely to be applicable to many other cancer types.\u00a0 Over four hundred patients participated in the study, offering over sixteen hundred tumour samples alongside blood samples used to detect circulating tumour cells (CTCs) over seven years. These were analysed in exquisite detail to understand the genetics of how the tumours developed.\u00a0 And there are some worrisome headline findings.<\/p>\n