What's New in Adrenal Cancer Research?

Chemotherapy

Although adrenal cancer can be hard to study, experts are looking for new drugs that may help, as well as looking at the value of current treatments.

Ongoing studies are looking at which chemotherapy combinations would allow for the best treatment outcomes, but the lowest risk for side effects.

Targeted therapy

Researchers are working to understand the genetic changes that cause adrenal cancers so that newer treatments to target these changes can be found.

Targeted therapy  uses drugs to attack the programming that makes cancer cells different from normal, healthy cells. Each type of targeted therapy works differently, but all alter the way a cancer cell grows, divides, repairs itself, or interacts with other cells. 

Researchers are continuing to study targeted drugs, such as IGF1R inhibitors, VEGFR inhibitors, and EGFR inhibitors. So far, they have not found a way to make them very effective. 

Genetics

Scientists are learning how changes in certain genes cause normal adrenal cortex cells to become cancerous. Understanding these genetic changes will help doctors develop better methods to diagnose this disease, as well as treatments that are more effective and have fewer side effects than those currently available. Medical centers involved in research might ask their patients for blood samples and about diseases in other family members to learn more about adrenal cancer.

 The goal of these studies is to learn more about how adrenal cancer forms, and in the future find new targets for adrenal cancer therapy. For example, there have been several studies looking at which hereditary syndromes, such as Lynch syndrome, lead to a higher risk for adrenal cancer. (These syndromes are discussed in Risk Factors for Adrenal Cancer.)