IMPPC Fundación Institut de Medicina Predictiva i Personalitzada del Càncer

11.   Why focus on cancer?

A change in paradigm from curative to Predictive and Personalized Medicine will revolutionize health care in the future.  It will be a profound change that affects administrators and those responsible for financing as well as medical staff and patients.  It will demand a change in behavior and expectations of the population.  Such changes will not be instant.  Experts predict that early progress will be seen in cancer, neurological disease, cardiovascular disease, allergic illnesses and endocrinological diseases of metabolism, especially diabetes.

The treatment of cancer is an area where rapid advances can be made for two reasons:

•       Cancer is a genetic (and sometimes hereditary) disease

•       The genetic and proteomic changes that take place in the biochemical pathways of cells during a the cancer process have been closely studied for many types of cancer

 In Catalonia there are centers studying Predictive and Personalized Medicine of cardiovascular disease (Hospital de la Santa Creu i San Pau) and neurological diseases (Center for Genomic Regulation). 

Dr Perucho and members of the team at the IMPPC have a wide experience of research into the molecular changes that take place in the cancer process in the digestive system, particularly the colon.  Much of the information required to move to a predictive and personalized treatment of this illness is already known. 

The IMPPC proposes to start with the study of cancer of the lower digestive tract with the objective of expanding to network with research programs working on lung cancer (Germans Trias I Pujol University Hospital), breast cancer (University Hospital of Vall d’Hebron, Catalan Institute of Oncology) and prostate cancer (University Hospital of Vall d’Hebron, Catalan Institute of Oncology).