Recent advances in understanding osteosarcoma and emerging therapies

Fac Rev. 2020 Nov 26:9:18. doi: 10.12703/r/9-18. eCollection 2020.

Abstract

Osteosarcoma is the most common bone cancer in adolescents and young adults, but it is a rare cancer with no improvement in patient survival in the last four decades. The main problem of this bone tumor is its evolution toward lung metastatic disease, despite the current treatment strategy (chemotherapy and surgery). To further improve survival, there is a strong need for new therapies that control osteosarcoma cells with metastatic potential and their favoring tumor microenvironment (ME) from the diagnosis. However, the complexity and heterogeneity of those tumor cell genomic/epigenetic and biology, the diversity of tumor ME where it develops, the sparsity of appropriate preclinical models, and the heterogeneity of therapeutic trials have rendered the task difficult. No tumor- or ME-targeted drugs are routinely available in front-line treatment. This article presents up-to-date information from preclinical and clinical studies that were recently published or presented in recent meetings which we hope might help change the osteosarcoma treatment landscape and patient survival in the near future.

Keywords: Omics; Osteosarcoma; Precision medicine; Therapy.

Publication types

  • Review

Grants and funding

The “osteomic” research programme (U1015) is funded by the association Etoile de Matin, une Main Vers l’Espoir, la Ligue nationale contre le cancer, the French Society of Pediatric Oncology (SFCE, société Française des cancers et leucémie de l’Enfant et l’adolescent), and the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation. The OS2006 clinico-biological database was funded by SFCE and the association Imagine for Margo. The French Biological OSTeosarcoma Data Sharing program (BoOST-dataS) is funded by the French National Institute of Cancer (INCa) and approved by the intergroup InterSARC.