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Qatar’s efforts in advancing precision medicine for cancer care and other diseases will help improve healthcare not only in Qatar but also the entire region, said an expert.
As Arab patients are underrepresented in international clinical trials, Qatar’s efforts to the genetic makeup of Arab patients plays an important role in advancing precision medicine in the region, said Dr. Julie Decock, a scientist at the Translational Cancer and Immunity Center, Qatar Biomedical Research Institute (QBRI).
Much of QBRI’s translational research focuses on precision medicine for populations in Qatar and the region.
According to Dr. Decock, majority of large-scale studies are conducted in individuals of Caucasian ancestry with a recent increase in the number of black and African American patients being included in clinical trials. There is also a large underrepresentation of Arab patients.
“Cancer, just like many other diseases, is multifactorial in origin where the genetic component plays an important role in the origin and progression of the disease as well as the likely response to treatment. Therefore, a drug that works well in cancer patients of Caucasian origin will not necessarily benefit patients of Arab descent. Efforts to map the genetic makeup of Arab patients, including the work of the Qatar Genome Programme and Qatar Biobank, are of utmost importance to advance precision medicine in this region,” she told The Peninsula.
“QBRI is committed to advancing precision medicine in Qatar and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, and has established several initiatives to enhance our knowledge of the Arab genome and its relation to disease risk, progression, and treatment response. As these projects mature, Qatar will be in a better position to improve healthcare for the country’s and the region’s populations,” she added.
In reply to a question about the future of cancer, Dr. Decock said that at present research is rapidly evolving and has the potential to really impact and transform healthcare in future.
Dr. Decock is a joint Assistant Professor at HBKU’s College of Health and Life Sciences. Since joining QBRI, which is also part of HBKU, she has established a research programme in the areas of tumour antigen discovery and tumour immunity, two key research areas that can help accelerate breast cancer research and advance the development of new treatments.
In an era of precision medicine, new targeted therapies for cancer provide a promising glimpse of the future of cancer research and give hope to millions, according to Dr. Decock.
In the decades since the first randomised control trial (RCT) was used to evaluate cancer treatments, patients have been able to access many of the new, and often innovative, treatments by participating in clinical trials.
Dr. Decock explained that an RCT is the most stringent and reproducible method to determine the safety and effectiveness of a new intervention or treatment and is most often used to guide clinical practice decisions.
“The key defining feature involves randomly assigning subjects to an experimental or control group which allows for directly comparing the effects of a new treatment to the current standard of care treatment plan. A similar approach is often used in preclinical translational research,” she said.
“For example, in our work at the Translational Cancer and Immunity Center at QBRI, we apply similar principles to investigate the anti-cancer effects of new therapeutic targets. Recent efforts in my group have led to the identification of a molecule called Lactate Dehydrogenase C (LDHC) as a novel candidate for combination treatment, whereby drugs acting against this molecule can be used together with existing anti-cancer drugs to improve the treatment efficacy in breast cancer,” added Dr. Decock.
