I thought it wasn't something that had an impact, but thanks to the patience of an acquaintance of mine who works in clinical research, I finally understood the significance of what some newspapers (Italian and European, but maybe in the USA as well) are saying about the need to change the names of various types of cancer. And I must say, it would be a revolution of incredible magnitude.
I discovered that this has been discussed for years, but I hadn't heard about it. Essentially, the idea is to remove the tumor's origin from its name and instead use its molecular structure. For example, we could have a "BRCA positive cancer," regardless of whether it originated in the prostate or the breast. But what are the advantages? This is where I found myself thinking, "what the heck..." when I gave it some thought. Now, clinical trials are almost always conducted by tumor type according to its origin, so I could find myself in a situation where the same medication could be used for different tumors, which maybe are all BRCA positive, but the experimentation is planned to be carried out sequentially (e.g. first on prostate, then on breast, then colon...). Instead, according to the proposed new system, it would proceed in parallel based on the genetics of the tumor and not its origin.
Anyway, I wanted to share this with you! Also because it's one of those cases where I told myself, "how stupid are you?" for not having realized on my own the importance that this change would imply 😜😜