How Effective is Precision or Targeted Cancer Treatment?

Executive Summary

• Many cancer centers promote the benefits of prediction oncology.
• This article covers the reality of the effectiveness of precision oncology or precision cancer treatment.

Introduction

It is widespread for cancer centers and oncologists to promote precision or targeted cancer treatment. In this article, we present the expected effects of these items.

Yale Medicine

A typical explanation of how precision cancer treatments work is found in this quote from Yale Medicine.

“The more targeted treatments get, the more potential there is to tailor treatment for the individual,” says oncologist Eric Winer, MD, director of the Yale Cancer Center and physician-in-chief of the Smilow Cancer Network, who has focused his research on chemotherapy and biology’s role in personalizing its delivery. “And that’s exactly what has happened with breast cancer. We now have clinical trial results showing that many women don’t need to do all of this very toxic therapy,” he says.

That certainly sounds promising. Look how much better cancer is getting — the treatment is tailored! What could be better?

Precision Cancer Treatment’s Effectiveness Percentage?

It is surprising to see the following quote in KHN from the article Widespread Hype Gives False Hope To Many Cancer Patients, which, unlike Yale Medical, does not have massive financial conflicts of interest with the cancer industry.

Hospitals also have drawn criticism for overstating their success in treating cancer. In 1996, Cancer Treatment Centers of America, a for-profit chain, settled allegations from the Federal Trade Commission that “they made false and unsubstantiated claims in advertising and promoting their cancer treatments.”

The company’s current commercials — dozens of which are featured on their website — boast of offering “genomic testing” and “precision cancer treatment.”

The commercials don’t tell patients that these tests — which aim to pair cancer patients with drugs that target the specific mutations in their tumors — are rarely successful, Prasad said. In clinical trials, these tests have matched only 6.4 percent of patients with a drug, according to Prasad’s 2016 article in Nature. Because these drugs only manage to shrink a fraction of tumors, Prasad estimates that just 1.5 percent of patients actually benefit from precision oncology.

How curious that The Cancer Treatment Centers of America did not mention the percentage of the patients that benefit from precision oncology.