Clinical Trials

After decades of using one-size-fits-all therapies to combat cancer, doctors are using new tools to help decide when their patients can skip chemotherapy or other harsh treatments.An approach to oncology that has been in place for decades is beginning to yield to an arsenal of long-term clinical studies, genetic tests and novel drugs that target cancer cells and their infrastructure."What is happening is a combination of new technology and more-targeted cancer drugs," said Dr Sandra Swain, medical director of the Cancer Institute at Washington Hospital Center and president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). "We've tried the approach of big, nonspecific treatments ... We have found that throwing chemo at patients has not (necessarily) cured them."Traditional chemotherapy drugs work by interfering with the entire body's system of cell replication, causing harsh side effects like fatigue and hair loss.Since the completion of the human genome project in 2003, scientists h...

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