Fresh ways to fight cancer
In recent years, cancer patients have benefited from a new array of weapons to fight the disease. Traditional chemotherapy and radiation therapy — blunt clubs aimed at any fast-growing cell in the body — have been augmented by “targeted therapy” drugs that interfere with specific cellular functions in an attempt to block cancer growth. More recently, therapies that unleash the body’s immune system on cancer have been making their way to the clinic, offering new “immunotherapy” weapons in what has become an expanding clinical arsenal. Researchers came to Boston in November for a daylong symposium on curing cancer. The session at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) was hosted by Pier Paolo Pandolfi, George C. Reisman Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of BIDMC’s Cancer Center and Cancer Research Institute. Pandolfi talked to the Gazette about the encouraging progress in the fight against cancer and about a promising new avenue...