Seminar: ‘Molecular diagnostics aid cancer treatment’

‘In the future, doctors may be able to predict a patient’s response to radiation’


Our Correspondent December 27, 2012
“The challenge is to find the genes active in cancer and separate them from the others,” says Dr Amjad. PHOTO: FILE

LAHORE: While the incidence of cancer remains high and deaths due to the disease too frequent, novel molecular diagnostics are allowing physicians to more accurately diagnose cancers, identify predisposition, and select targeted treatments and personalised medicine for patients.

This was said by Dr Asim Amjad, radiation oncologist from the Alan Blair Cancer Centre at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, during a seminar, Genetics of Cancers, at the University of Health Sciences (UHS) on Wednesday. Dr Asim Amjad said that at the molecular level the problem of how to reduce cancer mortality is approached principally by identification of patients who have a genetic predisposition to develop cancer and detection of genetic changes in body cells that favour degeneration to form cancer cells. He said emphasis in molecular diagnostics is on the expression patterns of genes. “The challenge is to find the genes active in cancer and separate them from the others,” he said, adding that molecular diagnostics helped scientists to identify gene expression patterns that can accurately predict a good response to treatment.

The doctor hoped that in future, before any treatment is given, doctors may be able to predict a patient’s response to chemotherapy or radiation based on this research.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 27th, 2012.

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