Molecular Oncology

Each year in the U.S., more than 20,000 patients are diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia — an aggressive and often lethal malignancy — and more than half this number of patients die.

This year has seen some groundbreaking advances in genitourinary oncology, particularly in the fields of prostate, kidney and urothelial cancers.

Our understanding of pancreatic cancer biology is advancing rapidly.

Molecular oncology is a rapidly evolving field with exciting results.

Cancer can be a very personal and individualized disease, with predictable and unpredictable outcomes.

Exciting developments in molecular oncology within the past few months include impressive clinical results of a novel drug that targets RET fusions, evidence for variability in gene mutation allele-specific therapy responses, a novel MEK1 resistance mechanism, and an emerging complexity about differences between oncogenic driver mutations regarding the biology of cancer in a given tissue of origin.

With the explosion of knowledge in molecular oncology, advances are being reported almost daily in the scientific and clinical literature.

There will be 22,530 new cases of ovarian cancer in the United States this year.

This year’s ASCO Annual Meeting included several major successes that should translate to new molecular targets in advanced non-small cell lung cancer, but recent real-world evidence should lead us to take a hard look in the mirror and realize we’re failing to deliver on the promise of the treatments we already have.

Bladder cancer is one of the most common forms of cancer in United States, with an estimated 81,190 new cases and 17,240 deaths in 2018.