Happy New Year! Ready to grab hold of 2024 and make it your own? Prepared to put the past past? Building on an amazing 2023, we can anticipate more magic in a great year ahead.
If 2023 brought you into the “cancer treatment world”, you will now be experienceing so many benefits that seem like an alternate universe even to those of us in the field. We no longer conference each week to discuss how we can slash/burn/poison cancers, instead it’s about genetic testing, immunotherapies, antibody treatment trials, CAR T, new mRNA vaccine for hard to treat pancreatic cancer, stereotactic precision radiation, invasive radiology, smart bomb radionuclides and AI surgeries. Chairing these “tumor boards” for 30 years, the changes are nothing less than siesmic.
Next generation sequencing research at Dana Farber for colorectal and endometrial cancers are drilling down even further into the immunohistochemstry and the expectation is to use this for other cancers as well. Patients are getting liquid biopsies more often to find minute cancer cells circulating. Research at Case Western is examining the SCAN enzyme. Blocking this can protect from diabetes and they are already advancing the research to Alzheimers, cancer and heart failure.
It is impossible to list the fabulous findings from 2023, but what we can do is anticipate once again that the world is conspiring to care for us and will continue in a fast and furious way to do so in 2024.*
As we ring in the new with “Tiny Bubbles” (Don Ho 1966) let’s toast with gratitude for the strength we developed last year and for the power we will have for challenges ahead. Be ready for all new experiences, new people in your life, new discoveries, and even to having new expectations.
You may not be awake to see the fireworks- even on TV, but rest in the comfort and knowledge that there is light ahead in 2024 that will inspire, lift, heal and renew. Wishing you and your families a very Happy and healthy New Year.
*For more go to mskcc.org, “Top Cancer Treatment Advances at MSK in 2023”