The following article summarizes the original event which is listed below the summary.
Future directions in cancer care
At the UMRA luncheon on October 22, Douglas Yee, MD, a medical oncologist specializing in breast cancer and Director of the Masonic Cancer Center at the University of Minnesota, gave a presentation entitled, “Can We Afford Personalized Medicine?”
Personalized medicine uses genes, proteins, and the environment to prevent, diagnose, and treat disease. Such an approach is being applied to breast cancer. Breast cancer survival continues to improve, and breast cancer care is undergoing a major shift in approach using personalized medicine.
As more of the basic biology of the cancer and the body’s response to it is understood, new treatments are being developed that focus on using the body’s own immune system for fighting or eliminating the disease. Based on what has been learned, Dr. Yee said, medical or adjuvant therapy is now generally used prior to surgical intervention, as these new therapies reduce the amount of tumor present. This shift is also the result of clinical trials involving volunteers.
Newer clinical trial designs occasionally employ a placebo control but more often are using standard treatment as the control and testing a new agent against that standard. One such trial, the ISPY2 Trial, was discussed by Dr. Yee. These new agents are more expensive and can have side effects, but they also seem to improve both quality of life and patient survival.
Science is also discovering diagnostic tests using biomarkers that are more specific and predictive of a person’s response, so that the number of treatments needed can be limited to the individual patient’s ability to respond. Better biomarkers and improvements in biologic agents are two approaches to reducing the cost of these new agents.
—Frank Cerra, MD, chair, Program Committee, and president-elect
Current cancer research at the U and 'personalized medicine'
Tue, October 22 2019, 11:30am
Campus Club 4th Floor, West Wing Dining Room
Douglas Yee, MD, a professor of medicine and pharmacology, medical oncologist, and director of the Masonic Cancer Center, University of Minnesota, will discuss ongoing research in breast cancer at the University, and issues regarding “personalized medicine” and the potential costs associated with it when he addresses UMRA’s luncheon meeting in the Campus Club West Wing dining room on Tuesday, October 22.
Dr. Yee holds the John H. Kersey Chair in Cancer Research. He is internationally known for his laboratory research on the growth regulation of tumors by insulin-like growth factors (IGFs), and the clinical translation of these findings.
Dr. Yee graduated from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, earned his medical degree from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, completed his residency in internal medicine at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, and completed his fellowship in medical oncology at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.
Before coming to the University of Minnesota, Dr. Yee held faculty positions in the Georgetown Lombardi Cancer Center at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.
Top Doctor
He has been the director of the Masonic Cancer Center since 2007, leading it to the highest designation by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health. He has been recognized as a Mpls.St. Paul MagazineTop Doctor (2012–15), and as one of the "Best Doctors for Women" by Minnesota Monthly (2011, 2014).
Dr. Yee’s specialty as a medical oncologist is breast cancer. His laboratory has been interested in the regulation of cancer cells by IGFs and insulin. He also maintains an active clinical practice in the medical management of breast cancer. As part of his clinical care, he serves as the site principal investigator on several clinical trials that employ experimental therapies targeted against IGF receptors and the so-called PI3K pathway, a signaling system involved in regulating cells.
He is chair of the Agent Selection Committee of the I-SPY2 Trial, which, as described by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is investigating the ability to practice personalized medicine by learning which new drug agents are most effective with which types of breast cancer tumors, and which early indicators of response are predictors of treatment success.
Dr. Yee also serves on the Executive Committee of this NIH clinical trial.
—Frank Cerra, MD, chair, Program Committee and president-elect
Come at 10:30 for coffee and conversation
The West Wing Dining Room is available to UMRA members for coffee and conversation before our luncheons. There is no charge and no need to RSVP.
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