Report of the Sarcoma Progress Review Group. A Roadmap for Sarcoma Research

摘要

Sarcomas comprise about 1 percent of adult and 15 percent of pediatric malignancies. It is estimated that in 2003, about 11,700 Americans were diagnosed with sarcoma and 5,200 died from the disease. However, these figures are probably underestimates, and the number of Americans with each sarcoma subtype is unknown. Current diagnostic coding systems categorize cancers by location and therefore make identification of sarcomas difficult. For example, physicians once viewed gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST) as one of the rarer subtypes of sarcoma. However, in a recent review of 1,500 intra-abdominal tumors for a genetic marker for GIST, researchers discovered 400 cases, of which only 100 had been diagnosed as GIST. (The other 300 had been diagnosed as other sarcoma subtypes.) Diagnosis is delayed in many patients by the lack of experience of primary physicians, who often attribute the initial mass to common benign lesions. Once diagnosed, patients cannot rely on a uniform standard of care, resulting in wide variations in care and outcomes. New therapies are desperately needed, but the fragmentation of biological, translational, and clinical research makes it difficult to initiate innovative and timely studies.