From the depths of artificial intelligence to experts pushing developments in biologics, new cancer diagnosis, detection and therapies continue to emerge across the profession — promising an easier path forward both to patients and clinicians.
Five oncology experts share the innovations, technologies and advancements across the field that they are closely watching in 2023:
Ken Chaij. Executive Director of Oncology Service Line at Kettering (Ohio) Health:
I'm most excited about the use of genetics to fight against cancer. It is the standard of care for all blood cancers, and over the next three to five years, I think all cancers will be measured by that standard. It's constantly evolving each week with something new coming out in the realm of genetics and the molecular side of things.
In terms of technology, I'm excited about MR linear accelerators. The combination of MRI and radiation linear accelerator has only been around for maybe five to 10 years. That is a game changer when it comes to radiation. It allows you to provide a much higher dose of radiation because it's so targeted, and you're sparing all the good tissue you can so a patient can get back to a normal life much more quickly, and they have fewer treatments.
Chris Flowers, MD. Division Head Ad Interim Of Cancer Medicine at MD Anderson Cancer Center (Houston): Biologic therapies for cancer are extraordinarily exciting. There are two particular areas in immunotherapy: bispecific antibody therapies and cellular therapies that bring components of the immune system to target the cancer and attack it. In my own area of the lymphomas, we've seen both cellular therapies. Historically, autologous stem cell transplantation and allogeneic autologous stem cell transplantation — and now more recently in car-T cell therapy — have had a major impact on outcomes for patients with lymphomas and other blood cancers. I think in the decades ahead, we'll see that cellular therapies and antibody approaches will have an impact not only in the hematologic malignancies, but in solid tumors and a number of cancers across the board.
Michael Postow, MD. Chief of Melanoma Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (New York City): I think the new ways that we're using the immune system to fight cancer with treatment like cellular therapies is the most exciting, but also what we and others are doing with certain types of vaccines. There is renewed enthusiasm after a long period where vaccines fell out of favor, and I think that resurgence of interest and progress is exciting.
Joanna Sesti, MD. Director of Thoracic Surgery at RWJ Barnabas Health (West Orange, N.J.) and Chief of Thoracic Surgery and Director of Robotic Thoracic Surgery at Cooperman Barnabas Medical Center (Livingston, N.J.): One of the things that drew me to thoracic surgery is technological advances, especially in the last 10 to 15 years. The major advancement I'm excited about is the introduction of the robotic surgical system and the adaptation to thoracic surgery. With each interaction it's become better and better until it's become mainstream in thoracic surgery. Before the robotic system was introduced, the adaptation of minimally invasive techniques in lung cancer surgery was pretty dismal across the country. But with the introduction of this robotic surgical system, the adaptation to minimally invasive techniques has really rocketed, which is at the end of the day better for the patients. So certainly any further iterations of the robotic system is an exciting thing to look forward to.
I know a lot of other companies are looking to roll out robotic platforms. So what cool toys will they come up with? I guess we'll see.
The introduction of immunotherapeutics has been really just groundbreaking. I actually just saw a patient yesterday that had pretty advanced lung cancer. They were treated with chemotherapy and immunotherapy as induction prior to surgery. And when we rescan them, there wasn't even any evidence that there was any cancer left. Hopefully there will be more agents that are discovered that are targeted to certain mutations. So that's all very exciting as well.
William Tse, MD. Division Director Of Hematology And Oncology at MetroHealth (Cleveland): Immunotherapy, especially cellular immunotherapy, genome gene therapy. There's no other cancer treatment that can be called a triple threat. Why? It's a live drug that we use to educate the CAR-T cells so they acquire the ability to kill cancer. To me, it's the most exciting cancer development in history.
Editor's note: MetroHealth recently completed construction of its vector and cellular good manufacturing practice facility and became the first safety net hospital to offer in-house viral vector and cellular therapies.