Efficacy of Individualized Cancer Management

Abstract

Individualized cancer management is the opposite of the standardized care adapted for current clinical practice by the mainstream medicine. It is not a fancy concept but a logic and inevitable reality derived from the intrinsic characteristics of cancer and host antitumor response. The question is not whether it should be done but how it is done. One missing aspect of individualized management is how to measure its effectiveness. Unlike standardized management that compares therapy efficacy among different management plans by the statistical criteria on the entire groups of patients but not individual patient in the group, individualized management can measure the efficacy on individual patient. This is not only possible, but necessary. A true individualized cancer therapy is not only based on personal situation for each patient, but must also satisfy the criterion that the outcome of selected therapy is predictable for that patient, a feature that current standardized care does not have. Therapy selection based on the individualized assessment of the status of antitumor immunity in each patient is the essential part of individualized management. Thus, treating each patient according to the status of his antitumor immunity should be the most critical skills a physician needs to master when facing each individual cancer patient. In the past seven years, we have been exploring individualized management of cancer through recognizing and manipulating antitumor immunity in each patient. Our combined experiences indicate a significant benefit to patient survival with reduced costs even when such effort was not perfect in the past. With time and more learning, we see this practice becoming more and more practical in a clinical setting. When this individualized approach becomes guideline for cancer management, we will see a significant leap of clinical improvement on both patient survival and cancer cure rate