[Waiting for the break through: a few tentative scenarios for cancer prevention and treatment in the coming decades].
This is a brief outline of just a few promising strategies which clinical cancer research may be expected to concentrate upon in the course of the forthcoming decades. As far as treatment is concerned, radiotherapists are investing considerable effort in the development of three-dimensional conformal techniques, the superior precision of which may permit higher (and probably more effective) target doses without unacceptable normal tissue damage. For medical oncology, some of the newer angiogenesis inhibitors have shown great experimental potential and clinical trials with proteins such as angiostatin and endostatin are being planned for the near future. Simultaneously, increasing numbers of large clinical studies are testing what various micronutrients can (or cannot) do for prevention. Their importance has been suggested by a long series of epidemiologic observations but direct clinical proof is still very scantly. In only one of the 4 intervention studies mentioned in the text, was the result as expected. Antiestrogens may well have brought breast cancer prevention much nearer as a clinical proposition. Prostate cancer intervention studies have only just begun, but even their rationale is backed by data in experimental animals.
De Schryver
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D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D006801:Humans; D008495:Medical Oncology / Q000639:trends; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000628:therapy*