Future Goals
Exciting advances are underway in cancer care. At Rush, research will continue to focus on enhancing survival rates and improving quality of life for cancer patients. It will seek to better understand disease progression for cancer with a continued focus on women's cancers such as breast and ovarian cancer; to further target chemotherapy, radiation and other treatments to spare healthy tissue and reduce the side effects of treatment; and to refine treatment protocols with the results of clinical trials.
In breast cancer, researchers will seek to answer questions such as:
- Is there benefit to adding systemic treatment to local treatment in patients whose breast cancer has recurred in the breast itself?
- Can the addition of targeted treatment (Herceptin) improve the outcome of patients with noninvasive breast cancer already receiving standard therapy?
- Is radiation therapy limited to the area of the tumor as good as whole breast radiation?
- Does the sequencing of chemotherapeutic agents affect the outcome of neoadjuvant treatment (given before the definitive surgery has been done, permitting serial biopsies and biological studies)?
- Can added years of hormone manipulation improve on the standard five-year duration?
- Does the addition of an antiangiogenesis agent increase the percentage of complete responders in the neoadjuvant setting or reduce the rate of recurrence after surgery?
- Can two targeted agents given together improve the outcome of either one alone?
