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Judson. J Cancer Metastasis Treat 2021;7:28 Journal of Cancer
DOI: 10.20517/2394-4722.2021.110
Metastasis and Treatment

Editorial Open Access

Sarcomas - the model for multidisciplinary care in
cancer

Ian Judson

Emeritus Professor of Cancer Pharmacology, The Institute of Cancer Research, Sutton, Surrey SM2 5NG, UK.
Correspondence to: Prof. Ian Judson, E-mail: Ian.Judson@icr.ac.uk

How to cite this article: Judson I. Sarcomas - the model for multidisciplinary care in cancer. J Cancer Metastasis Treat 2021;7:28.
https://dx.doi.org/10.20517/2394-4722.2021.110

Received: 6 May 2021 Accepted: 12 May 2021 Published: 25 May 2021
Academic Editor: Lucio Miele Copy Editor: Yue-Yue Zhang Production Editor: Yue-Yue Zhang

Sarcomas were one of the first cancers for which multidisciplinary clinics and team meetings were set up,
acknowledging the need for all the diagnostic and treatment disciplines to be involved in the clinical
decision-making process. This is amply demonstrated by the papers chosen for this special issue of the
Journal of Cancer Metastasis and Treatment, which includes articles on basic biology, translational research,
pathology, surgery and survivorship.

Sarcomas represent a bewildering collection of more than a hundred different clinical entities, each having
its own characteristics in terms of prognosis, preferred site of origin, pattern of metastatic spread,
responsiveness to therapy and molecular drivers. Molecularly targeted therapy of sarcomas began, of course,
with the use of imatinib in the treatment of gastrointestinal stromal tumour , where the driver is usually a
[1]
mutant form of KIT, which is permanently switched on. Unfortunately, this proved to be somewhat of an
outlier, and although imatinib has been found to be useful in a limited number of other sarcomas driven by
gene fusions, this drug is not of general utility. However, as happened in the field of haematology some
years ago, sarcomas are now increasingly being defined by their molecular characteristics, such as driver
mutations or chromosomal translocations. Although the t(X;18) translocation that characterises synovial
sarcoma was first described over 33 years ago , and the genes involved, SYT and SSX1/2, were identified
[2]
[3]
some years later , it is only quite recently that the molecular mechanisms by which the translocation alters
the transcription of multiple genes have begun to be revealed . Although a number of promising lines of
[4,5])
investigation are now being pursued, this information has not yet led to treatment specifically targeting the

© The Author(s) 2021. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, sharing,
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