Imagine treating cancer before it starts.
That’s the goal. And it’s more than a dream.
It’s becoming a reality at the Hennessy Institute for Cancer Prevention and Applied Molecular Medicine, which is finding ways to test and detect cancerous activity at its earliest stages — even before it starts. And, more importantly, before it returns.
The facility, located at the Hackensack Meridian Health & Wellness Center in Clifton — thanks to a generous donation from the Mike & Patti Hennessy Foundation, provides next-level care for cancer, according to Dr. Andre Goy, the director of the facility.
Goy said the pioneering technology being utilized has the potential to move the field of oncology.
“We now have technology, using genomics, where we can do a liquid biopsy from a blood line to detect traces of cancer,” he said.
“All medicine is moving toward earlier diagnosis, what we call preemptive medicine. I certainly hope in my lifetime that we’re going to be able to actually intervene and intercept cancer.”
Goy, a globally renowned expert in lymphoma research and treatment who serves as the physician in chief of Hackensack Meridian Health Oncology Care Transformation Services and the chairman and chief physician officer at John Theurer Cancer Center at Hackensack University Medical Center, said the potential impact is huge.
“Regardless of the type of cancer, we can, very early on, identify signatures that are suspicious for an emerging cancer,” he said. “I want to be very clear, this is not yet written, but this is where the field is moving.”
Identifying activity when it’s precancerous enables patients the opportunity to be treated in a less invasive manner.
Goy said lifestyle choices can be seen as a 50% contributor to cancer. This will give patients the ability to change their behavior — diet, exercise, etc. — and hold off cancer.
“We are actually moving even in a direction where we’re going to look at patients who have a very early form of, for example, multiple myeloma, and — based on lifestyle factors — be able to slow down the progression toward a full-blown myeloma,” he said.
This ground-breaking technology has many leads, Goy said.
“This is an evolving field,” he said. “We’re looking at different strategies — genomics, AI, liquid biopsy. We also are piloting a study where we use the smell of animals. Dogs have an amazing ability to detect signatures associated with cancer just by the smell.”
Goy said combining the powerful sense of smell of dogs with artificial intelligence technology can help detect cancer based on a patient’s reaction.
These potential ground-breaking efforts caught the eye of Shannon Pulaski, the executive director of the Mike & Patti Hennessy Foundation, which was created by her parents.
Pulaski, already familiar with Goy’s work thanks to his efforts to treat her mother, said the foundation’s mission is to fund efforts around prevention.
“One of our core missions is making sure that we’re changing the conversation when it comes to hereditary disease and bringing to light more of a talk of prevention as part of the course of treatment,” she said.
“As we go into the next generation, we want to see much stronger and better options for those diagnosed with breast, ovarian and other types of cancers. Where preventative surgeries might have been the standard of care, we want to see more vaccines or intersection treatments available to the patient.”
While, one day, such a screening could be available to everyone, for now it will be steered toward those with known attributes of potential cancer patients — including family history and obviously those who already have been treated for cancer and are in remission.
That aspect is especially appealing to Hackensack Meridian Health CEO Bob Garrett.
“A recurrence of cancer can sometimes be more serious than the first cancer,” he said.
Goya said the technology will fill in a huge missing piece in care.
“Two-thirds of cancer diagnosis and cancer death have no screening tests,” he said. “The classic PSA (prostate-specific antigen), chest X-ray, mammography, colonoscopy, etc., are important, but we need to do better.”
The institute, which began in Totowa last summer, cannot work fast enough, Goy said. After all, cancer is not waiting.
“Why is this important?” he asked, then answered. “Because cancer diagnosis in those under 50 has increased 80% in last 20 years. We now see stage four colon cancer in patients who are 35 years old.
“If we can do this at scale, it could be very helpful.”
