Philipp Staber (Department of Medicine I, MedUni Vienna and Comprehensive Cancer Center of MedUni Vienna and Vienna General Hospital) has already attracted international attention as head of EXALT 1, the world’s first study on precision cancer therapy, published in 2021. His ongoing follow-up study EXALT 2 has already been described as " landmark" in a news feature in "Nature".
Under the leadership of hematologist Philipp Staber, EXALT 2 is testing an innovative treatment strategy that tests drugs on patients’ cancer cells. "The latest study by Staber and his group is the first to directly compare functional and genome-guided approaches with treatments based on standard pathology and medical intuition," reads the "Nature" news feature entitled "The future of precision cancer therapy might be to try everything". The article uses international examples to show the current status and potential opportunities of functional precision medicine in cancer. "This will be a very powerful study that will likely confirm the utility of these functional tests," says Anthony Letai, hematologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Masssachusetts, and President of the Society for Functional Precision Medicine. "It is the first randomized trial comparing genetic and functional, drug-screening methods head-to-head in guiding therapy; we expect results by the end of 2025," says Staber.
