They write
George KritselisRadiotherapist, oncologist, research associate Radiotherapy, Athens Medical Center
Marinos TsiatasPathologist – Oncologist, Director Oncology clinic, Athens Medical Center
In the last decade, jumps in the field of radiotherapy and immunotherapy are impressive, leading to a real revolution in cancer treatment. Progress in radiotherapy technology has allowed more targeted and effective treatments, while immunotherapy has opened new horizons in oncology, enhancing the body’s immune system to combat cancer naturally.
Radiotherapy
There is now a rapid technological development, with the impressive progress of artificial intelligence, the development of advanced linear accelerators and the improvement of imaging methods, such as magnetic resonance imaging and PET/CT. These innovations allow the tumor to be targeted with excellent accuracy during radiotherapy, improving the design of treatment and ensuring minimizing healthy tissue exposure.
Therefore, the effectiveness of treatment increases significantly, offering better clinical results and improved quality of life for patients.
With the state -of -the -art linear accelerators available from the Athens Medical Group for several years, we can increase the dose of radiation and significantly reduce the time of treatment. Today, treatment can be completed in just 1 to 15 sessions, instead of the 30 or 40 required. This translates into less discomfort for the patient and faster completion of the therapeutic process.
Thanks to improved accuracy, we can apply extremely targeted therapies, limiting healthy tissue irradiation and increasing the dose of target tumor. This leads to greater efficiency of treatment, improved daily life and quality of life, while enhancing the disease control and increasing life expectancy.
At the Athens Medical Center, specialized scientific oncology groups evaluate each patient daily in order to design the best and most personalized treatment. Depending on the case, treatment can combine radiotherapy, immunotherapy or chemotherapy, ensuring the best possible result for the benefit of the patient.
Immunotherapy
In the last ten years, immunotherapy has revolutionized the therapeutic approach of cancer, radically changing the options available for patients.
Cancer cells exploit natural mechanisms of the immune system to inhibit its action and avoid detecting and destroying them. Modern immunotherapy, and in particular the inhibitors of control points, are precisely aimed at this process. In practice, they remove this “brake” that prevents the immune system from attacking the tumor, allowing it to effectively identify and destroy cancer cells.
The next day in immunotherapy brings to the forefront two pioneering approaches: diploid antibodies and car t-cells.
First, the duplicate antibodies are specially designed to target a specific molecule on the surface of the cancer cells. At the same time, they also bind a T-cell, which is activated and undertakes the destruction of the cancer cell.
Secondly, Car T-Cells, which are already applied to hematological malignancies, are an innovative personalized treatment. The patient’s own lymphocytes are gathered, genetically modified to recognize a specific target on the surface of cancer cells and then re -introduced to the body in large numbers. Once returned to the body, the modified cells detect and eliminate the cancer cells with excellent precision.
These advanced immunotherapy techniques are already applied to the Athens Medical Center in the context of clinical trials, opening new horizons to cancer treatment.
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