Dr. Van Tine Discusses Potential Novel Treatment Modalities for Sarcoma

Brian A. Van Tine, MD, PhD, assistant professor, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, discusses some potential novel treatment modalities for the treatment of sarcoma.

At the 2014 ASCO Annual Meeting, Dr. Sujana Movva presented data on predictive biomarker profiling of over 1900 sarcomas. Van Tine says the data that resulted from this analysis will help shape future clinical trial targets.

The analysis showed that sarcoma may be a disease resulting in the loss of PTEN, which helps researchers get an idea of how to direct future clinical trials. The analysis also showed that SPARC was overexpressed in the majority of the sarcomas that were analyzed, Van Tine says.

These findings are exciting, Van Tine says, because this gives researchers an idea of some commonalities among the disease type.