A Late-Arriving but Welcome Advance in Sarcoma Therapy

Advances in therapy for soft-tissue sarcomas are difficult. Sarcomas are rare, accounting for less than 2% of all cancers. Large studies are difficult to conduct in small patient populations, and small but meaningful improvements cannot be shown in small studies. The diversity in this small group — there are approximately 70 subtypes of sarcoma, and they clearly have different drug sensitivities — further explains why sarcoma oncologists have made few therapeutic advances. The activity of doxorubicin in sarcomas was discovered in the early 1970s, when there were no chemotherapeutic agents with any efficacy outside pediatric rhabdomyosarcoma, and many sarcoma specialists . . .