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IBC 2025 | The challenges of predicting and preventing malignancy in individuals with precursor conditions
Hendrik Veelken, MD, PhD, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands, comments on the challenges of predicting and preventing malignancy in individuals with precursor conditions. He highlights the need to consider not only the biological risks but also the psychological and social aspects of these individuals, and to better communicate with patients about their risks and potential interventions. This interview took place at the 3rd Intercepting Blood Cancers (IBC) Workshop held in Nice, France.
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Transcript
So, of course, the real issue is here if you know that you have some precursor risk situations where people might turn into patients because they develop a malignancy, is what can you do about this? And what became clear to me that it’s really multifaceted. So, we really have to consider more strongly what known risks mean for the patients, how they are as persons at that stage, psychologically, but also who is at risk of really developing health problems, symptoms and others...
So, of course, the real issue is here if you know that you have some precursor risk situations where people might turn into patients because they develop a malignancy, is what can you do about this? And what became clear to me that it’s really multifaceted. So, we really have to consider more strongly what known risks mean for the patients, how they are as persons at that stage, psychologically, but also who is at risk of really developing health problems, symptoms and others. And to me it’s a little bit diametrically opposed to our own definitions that we give because we call something cancer when certain criteria are met. But right before that, we don’t call it cancer yet because it’s a kind of an artificial, categorical step. And that is one of the things that we have to work on and explain better to the affected individuals. And then, of course, come back to the question, can we do anything about it to really prevent the disease from developing, keeping an eye on possible side effects, but also on the psychology of these things.
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