VIII Franco Brazilian Congress of Oncology

The role of genomics in oncology

Dr Carlos Felipe M. de Araujo – Fiocruz Research Center - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

I’m for molecular oncology and it’s a very interesting initiative from Dr José Claudio Casali and it’s amazing because it brings specialists of molecular biology and try to share this knowledge with the physicians to inspire them to use this knowledge up-front, this molecular biology knowledge, in the treatment and diagnosis. My part specifically is in the final of the lecture, we make a practical lecture and we invite the participants to make a DNA extraction from strawberry, that’s a very simple extraction and they can do it also at home, and we try to bring them to the lab and make them feel this, how it is to work in the lab. We also make a [?? 1:23] experimentation, very simple also, but we can try to make them lose this fear of molecular biology and stimulate them to apply this in the diagnosis and in the treatment of cancer.

My part is very simple, it’s something, we really try to make them use the different kinds of diagnosis tumour then to sequence some genes that can make a personal diagnostic, a diagnosis directed from each person. Because each people are different and with the molecular biology we can direct the treatment specifically for each person, so that’s the most important. So some people, some physicians, are afraid to use these techniques so this course is very important because we are trying to convince them that it’s not anything; it isn’t anything problematic or very expensive or something from the moon or a spaceship, not of this. It’s very simple, they can do it, it’s not so expensive. Actually, some kinds of diagnosis are something about, I don’t know, 4-5 Reals, it’s not expensive or something, we can do this with no problem.

So we also discuss the [?? 3:07] with the treatment and discuss some different techniques that we can use and just try to show them that it’s not something very complicated, it’s very easy to understand it. We just try to encourage them to use these resources.

In Franco Brazilian, in this congress, we are in the fourth time and it’s very good. We make people laugh and we stand up and they can do the extraction with their hands and that’s very cool. They can feel how to work with DNA, they can touch the DNA, so that’s amazing. That’s very good.