Publication: AARP The Magazine
A pioneer in community-based cancer care, Texas Oncology provides highquality cancer care and leading-edge technology and therapy options to patients where they live.
Our evidence-based care model treats the whole patient, focusing on patient outcomes and significantly improving how cancer care is managed.
From medical and radiation oncology, hematology, surgery, and imaging, to laboratory and pharmacy services, patients have access to important resources to enhance and facilitate their care.
Biomarker testing and the future of cancer care
Cancer biomarkers are genes and proteins on cancer cells that can be tested to learn important details about a person’s cancer. Biomarker testing helps oncologists connect patients to innovations in cancer treatment, increasing the ability of physicians to use targeted therapies and improving healthcare efficiency.
Biomarkers will increasingly be used to determine a person’s risk of future cancer development, find cancer at earlier stages, determine treatment effectiveness, and detect cancer recurrences.
Through research and clinical trials, cancer care is changing for the better. It’s becoming less about the type of cancer and more about creating treatment plans unique to each patient’s specific tumor. For more information, visit TexasOncology.com.
Innovative cancer treatments to improve quality of life
Great strides in cancer treatment are providing more options and improving longevity and quality of life for patients.
- Immunotherapy boosts a patient’s own immune system to fight cancer at the cellular level. Unlike traditional cancer treatments that target tumor cells, immunotherapy drugs boost the body’s defense mechanisms to attack cancer cells, stop or slow their growth, or limit the cancer’s ability to spread.
- Pencil-beam scanning and image-guided proton therapy targets cancer cells with extreme precision while minimizing damage to healthy tissue and allowing patients to maintain quality of life during and after treatment.
- Chimeric Antigen Receptor T cell (CAR-T) therapy galvanizes the body’s immune system to fight cancer using the patient’s own T cells, which are genetically engineered to recognize specific proteins on tumor cells. CAR-T reeducates the immune system to go after cancer cells and destroy them, allowing for targeted therapy with fewer side effects.
This article originally appeared in AARP The Magazine.