Personalized cancer care

With the help of personalized medicine, it is possible to offer our patients individualized therapy.

The Center for Personalized Medicine-Oncology (ZPM-Oncology) as part of the University Cancer Center Hamburg (UCCH) has set itself the task of further developing and clinically testing new diagnostic and therapeutic procedures in clinical application. Therapeutic efficacy is the top priority, while at the same time minimizing side effects for the optimal treatment of our patients.

To this end, the center collaborates with various work areas such as molecular diagnostics, imaging, data analysis and the bio- and research database. We also train colleagues and each other.

The Molecular Tumor Board takes place weekly at ZPM Oncology. Patients who meet the following criteria are presented here:

  • With an advanced or rare cancer,
  • who have already undergone therapy in line with the guidelines,
  • who clinically qualify for molecular-based therapy and
  • who agree in principle to a possible therapy based on the molecular findings.

Member of the German Network for Personalized Medicine (DNPM)

ZPM-Oncology is a member of the German Network for Personalized Medicine (DNPM). This network is a cooperation of 21 locations in Germany that have dedicated themselves to the mission of jointly improving the medical care and quality of life of cancer patients throughout Germany. The aim of the network is to provide patients with easy access to the personalized medicine approach.

Further information: https://dnpm.de/

Consultation hour

Tailor-made (personalized) treatment of cancer involves, first and foremost, the precise examination of the characteristics of the cancer (e.g. genetic changes to predict the effectiveness of a therapy) and of the patient (e.g. genetic changes to predict the processing/metabolism of a drug).

In the next step, targeted drugs with the best benefit/side-effect ratio can be selected and used. However, this step is complicated because not all genetic alterations are important for the cancer (and therefore the therapy cannot help the alteration) or often not only one alteration is present and it is not yet known exactly how the different alterations influence the cancer or each other. In addition, the cancer changes under therapy and can also develop new genetic changes.

For an appointment in our molecular consultation, please use our contact options.