Diana Azzam, Florida International University – Treatments for Children with Relapsed Cancers

On Florida International University Week: What happens when treatment options for cancer diagnoses run out?

Diana Azzam, assistant professor in the department of environmental health sciences, looks into taking the guesswork out of this process.

Diana Azzam, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at Florida International University. She has a Masters in Biochemistry from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon and a PhD in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology from the University of Miami, Florida. Her lab focuses on implementing functional precision medicine (FPM) approaches in adult and pediatric cancer patients that have run out of treatment options.

Treatments for Children with Relapsed Cancers

Among diseases, cancer is the number one killer of children in the U.S. Despite advancements in standard cancer treatments, options are limited when these treatments fail. When a relapse happens, doctors are forced into trial-and-error treatments, making it hard to predict which ones will work.

As a cancer researcher, my mission is to build personalized treatment plans of the most effective drugs for every cancer patient. To do this, my team and I developed a functional precision medicine approach that targets cancer by combining DNA testing with a new way to test individual drugs on tumor samples.

We take a sample of a patient’s cancer cells, grow the cells in in our lab, and expose them to over 100 FDA-approved drugs like statins and allergy medications, as well as cancer drugs. The most effective cancer fighters emerge, allowing us to give doctors a list of the best drugs to treat their patients. The process takes about a week.

This approach was used successfully for the first time to guide treatments for relapsed pediatric cancer patients. In our first clinical trial, 83% of the children guided by our approach showed improvement. Although other precision medicine processes exist, our approach removes the guess work and provides safe, easily accessible, and cost-effective options to patients who have run out of treatment choices.

My team and I have started two clinical trials to build upon the previous results. The more data we have, the easier it will be for us to understand how to best treat cancer and turn it into a manageable disease like diabetes.

Read More:
[Nature] – Feasibility of functional precision medicine for guiding treatment of relapsed or refractory pediatric cancers

About Personalized Cancer Treatment at FIU

[The Conversation]: Personalized cancer treatments based on testing drugs quickly leads to faster treatment, better outcomes