Precision cancer medicine — sequencing a patient’s DNA in order to customize cancer treatments — shows promise, but is very much in its infancy. It’s still not nearly precise enough to launch a winning battle against many forms of cancer. To dramatically advance in this field, clinicians, medical researchers, and computer scientists must substantially deepen their collaboration.
How Mount Sinai Health System Fosters Collaboration to Fight Cancer
It’s using RNA analysis to combat multiple myeloma.
October 02, 2018
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Summary.
Precision cancer medicine — sequencing a patient’s DNA in order to customize cancer treatments — shows promise, but is very much in its infancy. It’s still not nearly precise enough to launch a winning battle against many forms of cancer. To dramatically advance in this field, clinicians, medical researchers, and computer scientists must substantially deepen their collaboration. The Mount Sinai Health System is organized differently from most, as one integrated institution. Doctors from the seven Mount Sinai hospitals work side by side with researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. If a clinician and a researcher devise a viable idea to solve a medical problem, they are free to join forces and pursue the project. This makes it possible to rapidly bring a finding from the lab bench to the patient bedside. By taking advantage of Mount Sinai’s collaborative freedom, we are using advanced computer analytics to effectively treat some of the most challenging cancers, those that affect the blood and bone marrow.