Personalised therapy for gastric and pancreatic cancer

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Published: 21 Dec 2016
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Prof Salah-Eddin Al-Batran - University Cancer Center, Frankfurt, Germany

Prof Al-Batran speaks with ecancertv at the IX French-Brazilian Oncology Congress about precision strategies for treating pancreatic or gastric cancer.

He describes the influence of tumour location mutational profile in guiding treatment choice.

Pof Al-Batran last spoke with ecancer at ASCO 2016, presenting a novel antibody for gastric cancer.

The treatment of pancreatic and gastric cancer according to personalised oncology, or what we also call precision oncology, has developed very well over the last years. We are increasingly testing patients for distinct mutations or gene alterations and trying also to find out the personalised treatment for these patients. We have made progress in terms of understanding the biology behind these two patient groups. We, for example, know that gastric cancers are different, they are different in their molecular profiles and also in relation to their anatomical location, whether in the upper or in the distal gastric cavity. We also know that gastric cancers are sometimes hyper-mutated or they have other gene alterations that make them candidates for one or other therapy. It is also a similar situation in pancreatic cancer.

The main message is, of course, to try to do the best for the patients and the main message in my opinion in terms of precision oncology is to try to get biopsies from the tumour to find out the molecular profile of the tumour and try to treat the patients in a more individualised fashion.