But only hours after the launch in Birmingham, Mr Blair faced the wrath of a cancer patient's distraught partner at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in the city.
The NCIN is a new project that will bring together up to 22 million NHS cancer records from the 30 cancer networks in England to create the world's largest patient-based cancer data.
Oncologists will be able to take a single tumor cell from a cancer patient and determine within minutes or hours which aberrant genes are responsible for the cancer's growth, allowing them to customize therapy to the patient's particular genetic quirks, rather than having to guess which drugs might work best.
"It's a therapy that represents no side effects to the patient and it's harnessing entirely the patient's own immune system to fight the cancer, " Kwak said.
The presence of these rare "circulating tumor cells" may indicate that a patient's cancer is metastasizing, spreading from the breast, say, to the lungs.
Once a patient's cancer cells are isolated in the laboratory, the gene responsible for producing the antibody is extracted and added to the "tobacco mosaic virus".
The vaccine must be customized to recognize each individual patient's cancer--a much more laborious process than simply giving a pill or setting up an intravenous drip.
Moreover, there were significant differences between mutations in the original tumor and the site of metastasis, suggesting the need for additional biopsies as a patient's cancer progresses.
And no drug company has yet perfected a standardized test to determine which particular genetic flaws lie behind an individual patient's cancer, a key prerequisite to targeted therapy.
We think we're pioneering the clinical application of this by setting up the Tumour Profiling Unit, but one would think this would be absolutely routine practice for every cancer patient - and that's what we're aiming to bring about.
Those views are echoed by another patient with advanced cancer at St Gemma's, who is also planning to return home this week.
The American Cancer Society Clinical Trials Matching Service is a free, confidential program that helps patients, their families and health care workers find cancer clinical trials most appropriate to a patient's medical and personal situation.
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Similar devices could be implanted near a tumor to administer a multidrug cancer treatment, custom-tailored for the patient's particular disease.
He is one of a handful of researchers attempting to reprogram a patient's own T cells to attack cancer.
She said not only was IgG4 stopping the patient's more powerful antibodies from eradicating cancer, but it could also explain why some treatments based on boosting the immune response may be less effective in some patients.
The first step is to sequence the patient's DNA in order to uncover the cancer-causing mutation.
It's like a physician seeing a patient with cancer and telling him not to worry because he only has a slight cold.
The family of a cancer patient, who died before being admitted to the RHV's admissions ward in January, also complained about the treatment she received.
He estimates that he's able to extend the life of a successful cancer patient 50% to 60% over what standard treatment would offer.
It's uncertain if Landis will make a racing comeback like cancer patient Lance Armstrong.
Today's economies (especially the U.S.) are like a patient who has suffered cancer, leukemia and a brain tumor all at the same time.
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For now, patient navigation is primarily being used in the cancer community, but it's spreading to other chronic diseases.
By using new lab technologies, researchers from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) can alter the tumor proteins enough so the patient's own immune system learns how to identify and fight the cancerous cells.
Cancer cachexia appears to be caused by chemicals given off by the tumor or by the patient's immune system that is trying to combat the tumor.
On Star Trek, Dr. "Bones" McCoy could diagnose cancer just by waving a saltshaker--sorry, a "medical tricorder"--over a patient's body.
Genentech's most recent piece of news, from an 878-patient trial conducted by the National Cancer Institute, adds new potential to Avastin, which is already approved for colon cancer.
That's why she's working with Georgetown's cancer clinics to roll out a tablet app called Tonic that aims to make the intake of patient information feel less like a chore.
But for the average breast cancer patient who has neither the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation nor a close relative with breast cancer (Jolie's mother, for example, died from ovarian cancer), the risk of a new breast cancer in the nonaffected breast is less than 1%.
The world's first patient trial is using a drug combination of Thalidomide and chemotherapy to treat small cell lung cancer, the most deadly form of lung cancer.
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