Daniel Flora, Medical Oncologist and Medical Director of Oncology Research at St. Elizabeth Healthcare, shared a post on Substack:
“If repurposed drugs help in cancer, I suspect it will be in specific settings, for specific patients, and often for a small incremental gain.
That can still be valuable for patients, but incremental gains are different from breakthroughs, and breakthroughs are what patients and families are really hoping for.
When I think about what has changed cancer care the most over the last 20 years, so much of it has come from helping the immune system recognize and attack cancer, including immunotherapy, CAR-T, bispecific antibodies, TIL therapy, vaccines, and better combinations. We are now seeing long-term remissions, and sometimes functional cures, in cancers that used to be incredibly difficult to treat, including advanced melanoma and aggressive lymphomas.
That is where I think more of our hope and attention should go.
The bigger question is how we get more patients into immunotherapy and early therapeutics trials, make these treatments easier to access, and keep moving toward therapies that can create deeper and more durable responses.
Repurposed drugs should be studied, but they should be studied with humility and talked about more carefully, so patients do not hear them as an alternative to standard treatment, especially when a cancer may still be curable. I have unfortunately seen that happen too many times.”
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