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A comment on Death rates are declining for many common cancers in the U.S., report finds. Parent comment

Re:Death rates are declining for many common cancers in the ... by gregwebs on Thursday July 08, 2021 @05:05PM (#27777610)
> repeat until cancer goes away or patient dies

This sounds very similar to participating in a clinical trial and to me ironically seems to be the opposite of precision medicine.

The Nagourney Cancer Institute cultures live cancer cells from the patient to test for what drugs may work. Doesn't work for everyone, but seems more in line with precision. Whereas genomic sequencing hasn't produced the amazing results that were expected.

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Re:Death rates are declining for many common cancers in the ... by throwaway894345 on Thursday July 08, 2021 @05:12PM (#27777674)
> This sounds very similar to participating in a clinical trial and to me ironically seems to be the opposite of precision medicine.

yes, to be clear this is a description of "standard of care" in which oncologists follow a playbook based on the type of cancer. Precision medicine (as I, a lay person, understand it) involves picking a treatment that is very likely to work based on an individual's genes, the genes of their tumor, their past medical history, and other relevant factors. The idea is to use all available information to identify the treatment that is the most likely to succeed for that individual.

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Re:Death rates are declining for many common cancers in the ... by chefkoch on Friday July 09, 2021 @02:45AM (#27781054)
> The Nagourney Cancer Institute cultures live cancer cells from the patient to test for what drugs may work.

That assumes you have time for this. Very often treatment is started within days or even hours of diagnosis.

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