As a member of the Sunshine Consortium, Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center has access to, and is developing, clinical trials for young adult patients and their particular needs. This includes access to clinical trials for rare cancers likes sarcomas, says Ajay Gupta, MD, a pediatric oncologist. Young adult patients need different care than pediatric or adult patients and Roswell Park offers a full support system for them, including a psychologist and fertility consultations, in addition to innovative treatments and clinical trials not offered elsewhere in the region. “Sarcomas are rare and may be better monitored in a tertiary cancer center like Roswell Park so patients get the care they need,” he says.
I'm AJ Gupta. I'm a sarcoma oncologist and um pediatrician here at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. And I'm here to talk to you about adolescent young adults with Sarcomas. So, Rosso Park is unique in that it has a young adult program and we have young adult patients with sarcomas. They have their own unique needs and are very different from both adolescents or Children who are younger than 15 or 18. And, and they're different from older adults who are above the age of 40. They're patients who may not have health insurance or may have recently left uh for college or are living on their own, don't have a support network that Children or older adults might have in their families. And, and so they need a specific uh program that we have for them. The young adult program is, is great in that it looks at uh fertility which is a big concern for patients at this age um as they may not have started their own families or they want to continue their own families. Um It's important because they may need specific social work help to help with the finances and things like that. That they may have specific psychological stressors and mental health needs uh for which we have a psychologist. So, one of the initiatives, I'm a part of is called the Sunshine Consortium. And we develop a lot of trials for patients who are adolescents and young adults. We try to bring specific and special trials for them. Here at Roswell. As an example, we have patients um with Ewing sarcoma, osteosarcoma, rhabdomyosarcoma and non rhabdo soft tissue sarcomas who all go on these clinical trials. Um if it fits them, these are novel agents, they may be less toxic, they may be different ways of looking at the tumor. So we have a circulating tumor DNA trial where you can try to detect the tumor before it relapses in the blood. And instead of looking at just imaging, the young adult population is unique in that they are able to tolerate a lot more chemotherapy and a lot more aggressive regimens, which is why I tend to use pediatric style regimens for them. And that leads to better cures. So, sarcomas are extremely rare, a lot of the uh toxicities and a lot of the side effect profiles that you can see with a lot of these agents may be better monitored in a tertiary cancer center like Roswell Park. We're more than happy to look at their images pathology, anything at all so that the patient gets the care that they need anywhere that they are not just at Roswell, we also have a lot of really exciting trials that may be coming soon through science that's been developed at Roswell Park. I have several collaborators, including Doctor Joyce who's an epigenetic. We're really excited about taking control of something called replication stress within ewing sarcoma cells and harnessing that affecting the way that the cancer cells are able to uh repair themselves um while they're replicating and use this against them. So we're combining two agents, one's called the DDK inhibitor, and one's called a Wii one inhibitor. And combining that with something called a RT N I have, Doctor Rer Brechin who's developing special T cells to tech solid tumor and sarcomas. One of the big problems with solid tumors is how do we break down the, the, the tumor itself? You know, it's easy enough to get into the bloodstream if you have a blood cancer. But if it's a solid tumor, you actually have to break in and we're actually gonna be attacking some of those cells that make up the the tumor micro environment. Um And the tumor itself and I have Doctor Paul Kalinsky who's helping me develop dendritic cells to combine with checkpoint blockade and radiation. And so there's a lot of exciting different trials at Roswell Park that are cooking to see if we can help outcomes for young adults with sarcomas
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