Advancing Sarcoma Care Through Precision Medicine

Sarcomas represent a complex and uniquely challenging subset of oncology, accounting for only 1% of adult cancer cases. Because of their rarity and diversity—with over 175 different histologies identified—effective treatment demands a highly collaborative, multidisciplinary approach involving experts in pathology, radiology, and medical oncology.

During the 3rd Biennial Miami Precision Medicine Conference, Steven Bialick, DO, highlighted the shift toward precision medicine in the field. While standard chemotherapy remains a backbone for soft tissue sarcoma, Bialick explained why his practice now utilizes molecular testing for nearly every patient. By identifying specific molecular targets within these varied histologies, clinicians can move beyond "one-size-fits-all" treatments and open doors to specialized targeted therapies that offer new hope for patient outcomes.

Bialick is a gastrointestinal and sarcoma and connective tissue medical oncologist at the University of Miami Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Transcript:

The multidisciplinary asset of this is important to start with because sarcomas are so rare. These are cancers that affect 1% of the adult population with cancer. Multidisciplinary approaches from pathology to radiology and medical oncology are important. When we’re looking at a biopsy, we tend to favor using molecular testing in all types of sarcoma. There are over 175 different histologies of sarcoma, and all of them could potentially have different molecular targets that would open doors for targeted therapy. We have our standard soft tissue sarcoma backbone chemotherapy regimens that we use, but when we get into the nitty gritty of which ones have molecular targets, we wouldn’t know that unless we sent molecular testing. Some of the histologies have different or more common molecular targets, and that’s what we know. We’re excited to talk about [it] here at this conference [in] precision medicine, but we generally, in our practice, send molecular testing on most, if not all, of the [patients with] sarcoma.