Prof. Emeritus Samuel Hellman confirms 1995 hypothesis on intermediate cancer state

May 08, 2018

"In 1995, two University of Chicago-based cancer specialists suggested there was an intermediate state -- somewhere between curable localized cancers and lethal widespread disease -- for patients with metastatic cancer.

Those physicians, Samuel Hellman and Ralph Weichselbaum, both still at the University of Chicago, labeled that clinically significant intermediate state "oligometastasis," Greek for "a few that spread." They focused on tumors that had migrated from an initial cancer in the colon or rectum to one or a few distant sites.

[...]

Twenty-three years later, Weichselbaum, Hellman, the Pritzker Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus and former dean of the biological sciences at the University of Chicago, and colleagues, working with patients in treatment for colorectal cancer, have confirmed their oligometastasis hypothesis and for the first time have identified molecular patterns that can be used to predict which patients are most likely to benefit from surgery, leading to long-term survival."

Read the full release at Science Daily.

Source: University of Chicago Medical Center