Genes and Cancer - Hardcover

Inhaltsangabe

Despite tremendous efforts, there has been little improvement in the overall survival of patients with cancer over the last 30 years. Whilst changes in the management of certain tumours, including lymphomas, leukaemias and testis have produced dramatic improvements in survival, these tumours are rare and so have contributed little to the overall picture. Although there is no doubt that a combination of reducing smoking and dietary alteration would significantly result in a lower cancer incidence and therefore increased survival, it is likely that prevention strategies are going to have little immediate impact in the overall mortality of cancer as we enter the next century. Thus there is a need for the identification and application of new therapeutic strategies. For many cancers a number of factors have been identified which are of prognostic importance. These include patient performance status; disease extent and response to cytotoxic therapy. It is clear however, that considerable heterogeneity in tumour responses are observed, even among patients with a similar tumour. These data suggest that biological properties inherent within the tumour cells themselves may be of prognostic importance. These properties include the expression of drug or radiation resistant genes; specific and nonspecific chromosomal abnormalities and alteration in the expression of a range of oncogenes.

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