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Raj Batra: The absence of scientific rationale underlying contemporary clinical trials in lung cancers

Raj Batra/LinkedIn

Apr 4, 2025, 17:45

Raj Batra: The absence of scientific rationale underlying contemporary clinical trials in lung cancers

Raj Batra, Physician scientist/innovator in translational medicine, shared on LinkedIn:

“The absence of scientific rationale underlying contemporary clinical trials in lung cancers.

The understanding of lung cancer clinical trials is based on the assumption that the pathophysiological principles that guide existing clinical standards have been based on solid foundations.

There are now many who believe that assumption to be false.

The ‘stage’ directed surgical management, and the ‘driver directed’ targeted therapies neither account for disease pathogenesis nor pathophysiology.

What does account jointly for pathogenesis and pathophysiological effects is a chaos that ensues following chromosomal derangements in variably differentiated respiratory epithelial cells through many different divergent pathways, that ultimately converge on a clinical phenotype.

But a work around to that chaos has been made. A phenotype-based approach to validate biomarkers of aggression and to identify new combinatorial targets for therapies has been published, and proposed to USA Federal and State Research Agencies.

To comprehend the actionable vulnerabilities in lung cancers, one has to recreate them in experimental model systems based on the interactome of intrinsic genomic and epigenomic chaos, and the tissue specific microenvironments in which they reside. And in doing so, one has to pay attention to which of those combinations are consistent, and those which are most likely to kill the patient.

The methods and proof of concept for implementing this approach was first published by my (now defunct) group in 2009.

It’s past due time to implement these techniques and principles in pre-clinical and clinical studies.”