With the help of new technologies, new target discoveries, a deepening understanding of the human genome, and especially the proteome, many researchers now confront cancer with a different mindset. Without losing sight of a cure, scientists are exploring whether it can be treated as a chronic disease, one to subdue and control. This, they say, is a more reachable target.
"In 1990, you rarely heard about [disease management]," says Sudhir Agrawal, president and chief scientific officer at Hybridon in Cambridge, Mass. "But in the middle of the '90s, we started hearing about antibodies and specific drug approaches, like EGFR" [Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor]. An American Association for Cancer Research spokesman says that the disease-management approach became a discussion topic first at AACR's 1998 annual meeting. Then in April, Judah Folkman, of Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, declared that disease management "is what is emerging from" the 2002 ...
