The Rules in Cancer are Being Rewritten

Classic chemotherapy kills both cancerous and healthy cells in the body (hair, stomach lining, etc.) indiscriminately. "Smart Drugs," on the other hand, lock onto a specific mutation (e.g., the EGFR or HER2 gene) on the surface of the cancer cell, striking only that defective cell and causing no harm to healthy tissues.

Cancer cells are very insidious; they know how to put our body's defense system (T-cells) to sleep and hide themselves. Immunotherapy drugs do not kill the cancerous cell directly; instead, they take down the "blinding mask" in the eyes of the patient's own immune system. The awakened immune system perceives the cancer as a foreign microbe and destroys it on its own.

No longer are the lung cancers of two different people considered to be exactly the same. With Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS), the genetic map of the tumor is drawn. Furthermore, with a "Liquid Biopsy" performed simply by drawing blood, cancer DNA in the blood is monitored in real-time, and a special "tailor-made" drug best suited to that patient's mutation is prescribed.