Neha Pathak, MD, FACP, DipABLM: Welcome to the WebMD Health Discovered Podcast. I'm Dr. Neha Pathak, WebMD's Chief Physician Editor for Health and Lifestyle Medicine. Today we're talking about the rise in colorectal cancer in younger adults, changes in the screening guidelines, and groundbreaking advancements in treatment.

We'll address the most important questions: What's driving this increase? Is it a combination of lifestyle, genetics, and environmental exposures? What do we need to know about cancer screening, and when should we contact a healthcare provider about concerning and persistent symptoms? And what should I ask my healthcare provider during my next visit?

My guest today is at the forefront of this conversation and has made headlines for her groundbreaking clinical trial and its unprecedented results—results that revolutionized treatment for early-stage rectal cancer. We'll explore how this innovative approach can eliminate the need for surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation in certain patients, and how this approach impacts quality of life.

We will talk about the unique challenges that younger patients with cancer face, why early detection matters now more than ever, and what gives us hope for the future of cancer treatment and survivorship. This is a conversation you don't want to miss. First, let me introduce my guest and friend, Dr. Andrea Cercek.

Dr. Cercek is a physician-scientist and medical oncologist specializing in the treatment of patients with gastrointestinal cancers, particularly colorectal cancer, appendiceal cancer, and bile duct cancer. She's the Section Head of Colorectal Cancer and also the Founder and Co-Director of the Center for Young Onset Colorectal and Gastrointestinal Cancer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

This clinic—the first of its kind in the world—is dedicated solely to the specific needs of people under 50 who have colorectal or other GI cancers. This research and patient care center provides coordinated and holistic care that focuses on concerns including quality of life during and after treatment, preserving fertility, and the long-term effects of surviving cancer.

Welcome to the WebMD Health Discovered Podcast.

Andrea Cercek, MD: Thank you so much for having me.

Pathak: I am so excited to have you here. Full disclosure, you were my resident when I was an intern. I imprinted on you in my medical training, so I am so excited to talk to you today.

Cercek: Likewise. It's so good to speak to you—really exciting.

Pathak: In some ways, it's so prescient that you went into this field and started focusing on younger patients because just 20 or so years ago, when we were in training, you didn’t see as much of this type of cancer in such young patients. And so we're hearing a lot in the news, in the clinic. As you know, my husband’s a gastroenterologist. He's also seeing, in real time, the rise of colorectal and GI cancers in people younger than 50. What are you seeing in terms of the numbers and trends? What do we need to know?

Cercek: It's really alarming, actually. You know, they're definitely rising, right? We have the data, and then we have our own experiences in clinic. I mean, they just keep getting younger and younger, and we see higher and higher numbers. I would say from month to month—and it's not just unique to the East Coast. It's all over the U.S. It's actually all over the world. And we need to pay attention.

We don’t know why it’s happening, you know, so much so that it’s changing the numbers. The average onset now is younger in the United States because of this. It’s also changing a little bit of the landscape of colorectal cancer. Rectal cancer is increasing because the predominant rise in young adults is really due to rectal cancer incidence.

So it’s definitely happening—it’s not just that we remember the one or two really young patients. When I look at my new visit lists every week, everyone seems to be under 50, and all my colleagues around the world are seeing the same thing.

Pathak: Yeah, no, it is absolutely shocking. I mean, we are remarking on it down here in Georgia, in my husband’s group, and just amongst our friends, we're seeing a lot of younger diagnoses—cholangiocarcinoma and other types of cancers that were considered rare when we were in training. Are there leading theories around why this increase is happening? Diet, lifestyle, environmental exposures? What are we seeing?

Cercek: Yeah, I think it's exactly everything you just named. I think it’s most likely multifactorial. It is something environmental, but it’s probably not a single factor—it’s probably a combination of factors, whether that’s our diets, processed foods, more sedentary lifestyles, or exposure to things in the environment.

Antibiotics are kind of a main suspect, as well as potentially other medications, and then also, of course, things in the environment that we can’t control, such as microplastics. So I think everything is under investigation as it should be. And I think we don’t know is the honest short answer.

But the good news is that there are a lot of people now interested, and a lot of research going on into it—from an epidemiological perspective as well as smaller, more basic science studies looking at changes in the tumors and potentially trying to figure out where the difference might lie—if there even is a difference, or if we’re just all aging prematurely because of all these factors.

And as you brought up, I mean, it’s not just colorectal cancer—it’s really the entire GI tract, and it’s actually rising even outside of the GI tract. It’s certainly something that’s affecting liver cancers, cholangiocarcinoma, gastric cancer, and pancreatic cancer. These are on the rise in young adults and not associated with a hereditary predisposition. Most of these are sporadic.

Pathak: So let’s dig into that path. And I am, you know, mom guilt is real in so many ways, but when we think about what we’re feeding our kids, like the environment around our kids when they're super young—I know for me, it’s something I definitely think about. I can’t necessarily change too much just given how much we’re doing in our lives, but it definitely makes you think about being much more intentional about what you’re bringing into their worlds and their bodies.

Cercek: Absolutely. You’re right—mom guilt in so many ways, right? But it’s true. It’s, “What are we feeding them? What are they eating off of? Are they using the microwave with a plastic container?” We should have all glass containers—those types of things. And I mean, the problem is you can literally go crazy trying to micromanage all of this.

So I think for me—and I tell my patients the same thing—in moderation, as best as you can do. Obviously, try to avoid the obvious processed foods, high sugar, things like that. Eat as healthy as possible. But if you think about it, you could say, “Okay, don’t eat red meat,” because red meat, at least in older, average-onset individuals, is associated with colon cancer. We haven’t seen the same association in young adults.

But, you know, you can avoid red meat, eat fish—but then if it’s microplastics, the ocean is covered with it. You can literally go crazy. So I think it’s, you know, in moderation, as best as possible. The best we can do now is tell people: pay attention to your bodies, pay attention to your symptoms, be your own advocate.

And at the same time, I’m very confident and optimistic that our screening techniques are going to improve a lot—as I’m sure your husband talks about all the time. I think we are going to eventually have better screening for everyone, but hopefully we can at least identify this group that’s more at risk. Those are all future things for now. But yeah, just as healthy as we can be, I guess, is my answer.

Pathak: All right. Now, that’s really helpful because what we try to do, especially for anyone that’s listening, is to really think about what actions we can take without going crazy or without trying to boil the ocean.
So I’d love to then dig into screening. What do we know right now in terms of evidence-based screening practices?

Cercek: So, at the moment, routine screening colonoscopies begin at the age of 45. Everyone is eligible. Insurance covers it. It is highly recommended because we talk about early-onset colorectal cancer, but the largest proportion of patients are still in that 40- to 50-year-old group.
And so that is very much recommended. There are other screening modalities that, of course, one can do that are less invasive than a colonoscopy — you know, stool tests, blood tests, et cetera — but they are not perfect. Usually, they’ll detect once the cancer’s already formed; we don’t catch that polyp that we can remove before it develops into a cancer.
So we very much encourage screening colonoscopies at 45. And then, of course, if there is a family history or hereditary predisposition, that’s an entirely different set of recommendations. With a family history, we usually say 10 years younger.
And then I think more importantly, really, is just as I mentioned before — paying attention to your symptoms. If any change in GI symptoms persists for more than a few days where you can’t kind of chalk it up to a stomach bug, gastroenteritis, or something like that, to get medical attention.
And my husband’s an internist, and he will tell me 9.9 times out of 10 — maybe 9.99 times out of 10 — it’s nothing. But, you know, it’s definitely not something to ignore, and just to have that checkup.

Pathak: So I think that’s really interesting, because often I—

Cercek: I—

Pathak: —as well. So in primary care, we’re often battling people that might not be getting their screening colonoscopies when they’re of age because of stigma or just fears around the whole process. But now we’re seeing this concern of the opposite — where people might be having symptoms or red flags, and they’re younger than screening age.
So at this point, it’s not considered a screening test because you’re having symptoms and red flags. You shared some of those — changes in your bowel habits. Can you share a few others? And then you mentioned a few days. What timeframe should we be thinking about for really seeking medical attention and trying to get diagnostic testing done?

Cercek: So, in terms of symptoms, most tumors are located in the rectum — so at the end of the large bowel. Usually, that’s associated with bleeding — you know, in the toilet, on the tissue paper — often confused with hemorrhoids. Might be hemorrhoids, but it may not be. Constipation, pain with bowel movements, bloody bowel movements, unexplained weight loss — anemia can cause it. Usually, anemia is more seen with right-sided tumors, where people bleed without knowing that they’re bleeding, ’cause the stool is just liquid at that point. So it just kind of blends into the stool, the blood, so it’s not really obvious.
It could be constipation or diarrhea — such as a change in bowel symptoms. And usually, we say this kind of vague “few days.” You know, I would say anything that lasts five days, seven days is typically not associated with a virus or like a bug — you know, bacteria, E. coli, let’s say in food or something like that — an infection.
And so it should require, I think, a workup at least. See the doc, get some preliminary blood work, go over the symptoms to see if it’s something that warrants further investigation, like a colonoscopy.

Pathak: That’s right. That’s really helpful. And now I’d love to shift us over to why I’m so excited to talk to you — which is your work. So some of—

Cercek: Yes.

Pathak: —the news of what we’re seeing with the treatment and treatment options for patients with this type of cancer. So—

Cercek: Yeah.

Pathak: —you made headlines. Can you share a—

Cercek: Probably.

Pathak: —bit about what specific therapy — the immunotherapy — that you were working on, and why it was such a major study?

Cercek: Yeah, happy to. So we treat a lot of rectal cancer at Memorial, and when you treat rectal cancer — because the rectum’s located in the pelvis — it’s three therapies usually. We do chemotherapy first, then chemo-radiation, and then surgery. We started treating patients with that paradigm in the early — maybe 2012, 2013 or so — so over a decade.
And when you start with chemotherapy first, many people have a really good response — the pain is gone, they can have bowel movements that are almost back to normal. So it’s a really nice response to chemotherapy. And we actually noted a group of our patients did not respond as well, or their symptoms got better for a brief few days and then kind of returned.
And when we looked at this, the patients had mismatch repair–deficient or MSI-high tumors. It’s a defect in the tumor repair machinery that basically leads to a very high mutational burden. So the tumors look very abnormal, express many what are called neoantigens, which really are kind of like flags for the immune system to already be engaged in trying to fight the cancer. Because normally, colorectal cancer hides very, very well from the immune system. But these tumors that are mismatch repair–deficient or MSI-high can be very sensitive to immunotherapy.
So around the time that we were seeing this and had reported that mismatch repair–deficient rectal cancers were not responding well to chemotherapy, in advanced disease — so in the metastatic setting — checkpoint blockade with pembrolizumab had become approved, actually, by the FDA for metastatic colorectal cancer that was mismatch repair–deficient or MSI-high.
So when these patients had progression or developed disease recurrence, we were able to treat them with immunotherapy and saw really good responses. And so that gave us this idea of using immunotherapy upfront as the first intervention of what we call total neoadjuvant therapy — right? So doing immunotherapy first, and then seeing how the tumors respond to immunotherapy. If the tumor’s completely gone, we didn’t have to do anything more — meaning we could omit chemo, omit radiation, and omit surgery.
If the tumors weren’t completely gone, then we would kind of add back our standard-of-care total neoadjuvant regimen stepwise. Because the real issue with rectal cancer — the treatment works very well with this paradigm, but, you know, these tumors that were resistant to chemotherapy would have responded well to chemo-radiation and surgery. So the patients were cured — but there’s a lot of morbidity associated with those modalities.
A lot of patients — about 30% — because the tumor’s very low, need a permanent colostomy. Radiation — the ovaries and the uterus are in the field, so it leads to infertility and early menopause. And because we’re seeing more and more young patients, these are increasingly important issues. Obviously, quality of life is important at any age, but here, in particular, in a 30-year-old or 40-year-old, fertility is a very important piece of the discussion.
And so we had tried very hard to focus rectal cancer treatment with that in mind — thinking about if someone has a good response, can we omit radiation or omit surgery?
And so with this trial design, this was the exact same idea, but we thought, “Okay, what if we used immunotherapy first, and then we could potentially replace standard-of-care chemo, radiation, and surgery?”
And what we ended up seeing — and we reported the updated data this past April in The New England Journal of Medicine — is that 49 patients, all 49 out of 49, had a complete response to immunotherapy alone. So it was really amazing results. No one needed chemo, radiation, or surgery. Very minimal toxicity from the immunotherapy, and their pelvises were completely intact, you know, in survivorship. So it’s been pretty amazing results.

Pathak: That is amazing. Were you expecting that, or what were you expecting, and how was it when you started seeing these amazing results?

Cercek: Yeah, I mean, it was the best. I wasn't fully expecting it, right? We weren't expecting, obviously, a hundred percent. The way that the study was written was this sequential treatment like I described, and actually the first patient was already scheduled for chemoradiation because we thought, okay, six months of immunotherapy and then probably they'll need chemoradiation.
So we wrote that in, and when she had a complete response, we were like, hold on. Okay, we can omit radiation if the IRB and everyone agrees, because obviously there was no tumor remaining. And so then we, you know—and then after that, every single patient had a complete response at the end of six months of treatment. So it was super exciting.
Yeah, the first few were like, oh my gosh.

Pathak: That's amazing, 'cause when you think about the human being behind that and all of the things that you just sort of prevented—all the potential complications—it's amazing. How common are these specific types of cancers that respond so well to this immunotherapy?

Cercek: So it's about probably 5% of all early-stage, locally advanced rectal cancers—so a few thousand a year in the United States, probably about 80,000 or so a year globally. They are more commonly associated with Lynch syndrome, so we see lots of young patients, but they're not exclusive. You know, you can have sporadic mismatch repair-deficient or MSI-high rectal cancer as well.
It's about probably 50% that are due to Lynch syndrome.

Pathak: So what does this mean for the future of cancer treatment for rectal cancer in this particular stage? And then just if you're kind of thinking beyond that—

Cercek: For rectal cancer, it's been great. You know, the NCCN guidelines, right, which are our kind of cancer treatment guidelines, now have a decision point when the patient is first diagnosed with early-stage rectal cancer to check for mismatch repair deficiency by immunohistochemistry.
If the tumor is mismatch repair deficient, then they have an option of PD-1 blockade with either dostarlimab, which is the drug we used, pembrolizumab, or nivolumab. And then if it's MMR proficient, they undergo standard-of-care recommendations of total neoadjuvant therapy for rectal cancer.
Currently, there was a global study called Asia One, which has completed accrual and is now in the process of data analysis, along with our study for FDA approval. So that is coming soon, I hope, and that will be very exciting—and also, hopefully, you know, extend to patients worldwide.

And then we actually expanded our study of PD-1 blockade with dostarlimab to all solid tumors that were mismatch repair deficient—so patients with esophagus, stomach cancer, GYN cancers, GU (predominantly urothelial), as well as hepatobiliary cancers, including cholangiocarcinoma. They had the same treatment paradigm of six months of dostarlimab and then the opportunity of non-operative management.
And in that group, it was about 65% of patients that also didn’t need any other treatment modality. And some of these surgeries, as you can imagine, are quite morbid—a total gastrectomy or, you know, cholangiocarcinoma that was unresectable because of the location.

And so, for that subgroup, we’re continuing to enroll in the study, and then there are going to be focused studies for each disease type to hopefully get approval for neoadjuvant therapy with PD-1 blockade in those tumor types. Neoadjuvant therapy is therapy given before surgery—whether that’s chemotherapy, chemoradiation, or what we call targeted therapy, or even immunotherapy—it’s anything before the surgery.

Pathak: It’s just amazing to see how rapidly this has been taken up into guidelines for rectal cancer. So the hope is that very similarly, this will happen for these other cancers as well and become part of the guidelines.

Cercek: Yeah, exactly.

Pathak: Oh—

Cercek: And then our next goal is, like, you know, how can we do something like this in the other 95% of cancers that are not mismatch repair deficient? So that’s our focus of research now and our ongoing trials—to kind of continue to improve on neoadjuvant therapy for early-stage disease.

Pathak: And you’re looking for other sorts of genetic mutations where you can have an immunotherapy or a checkpoint inhibitor or something that is specific to that particular type of mutation, is that—

Cercek: Yeah, so it’s biomarkers. We have a study looking at HER2-amplified rectal cancer. So HER2 is, you know, more commonly talked about in stomach cancer and breast cancer, but it is a proportion of patients with colorectal cancer that have HER2-amplified tumors. And we have approval in advanced disease—in the metastatic setting—for HER2-targeted therapy.
So now our question is, using that biomarker and introducing that targeted therapy upfront, could we improve on neoadjuvant therapy with chemo and potentially not need radiation or surgery in that population?

And then the other one is with immunotherapy—it’s really more of a, there might be another biomarker or just kind of better drugs, better combinations of immunotherapy to be able to stimulate the immune system a bit better than what we did in the past, especially when it’s locally advanced and kind of in the in situ tumor microenvironment, right? Which may be a little bit more immunogenic than once the tumor metastasizes.

Pathak: Amazing. It really truly is just exciting. I’m getting goosebumps listening to you because of the pace at which, too, it’s coming into the real world and going to make an impact for real human beings. So I’d love to sort of shift us to that piece and really think about your patients—or someone who’s listening who’s facing this kind of diagnosis.
What would you say right now are some of the questions they should be asking or talking to their oncologist about?

Cercek: I think, you know, most important is to look at the tumor genetics. I think we are learning—even beyond mismatch repair deficiency—it’s super important to know what the genetic makeup of the tumor is and, you know, what the different approaches to treatment might be, right? There are many, many trials even in early-stage disease, but especially I would say in advanced disease, that a member of the audience who’s facing maybe metastatic colorectal cancer or another GI cancer should think about—or at least ask the question—is there anything outside of the standard of care that may be an option for me?

But right off the bat, I think everyone should have tumor testing for genomic profile—at the very least, immunohistochemistry for mismatch repair deficiency—because that really is a big decision point. Sort of, you know, do we do immunotherapy or do we do chemotherapy or combination, or whatever the standard of care might be for that tumor type.

I’m an eternal optimist, and I think we have every reason to be, right? And I’m very hopeful. We’ve made a lot of progress—not just in advanced disease—in this patient population where, you know, we really changed the quality of life. We had, you know, babies born—two women actually each had two already since being on the study—where before they would’ve been infertile and in early menopause, almost certainly with standard of care.
And so those kinds of changes can happen and are happening, and, you know, I think we’re going to just continue to improve upon that, like I said, even beyond just mismatch repair deficiency over the next several years, for sure.

Pathak: And to clarify for me as well, this is a therapy that’s now available at any cancer center, or is this something that someone would have to go to a specialty cancer center in order to be able to access?

Cercek: Great question. For rectal cancer, it can be accessed anywhere because it's in NCCN guidelines and that should be approved by insurance rather. It just needs to be checked and then the patient is eligible for that treatment. For the other tumor types, that is still mostly investigational. Some providers are able to get access. For instance, there are some strong data in colon cancer, and so, some insurance companies would approve immunotherapy for mismatch repair-deficient colon cancer. It's a bit more kind of debatable.
And then in other tumor types, it's mostly still under investigation. We have a trial. Other centers probably also have various versions of what are called neoadjuvant or preoperative therapies.

Pathak: That's really helpful. So along with really sort of understanding the makeup of your tumor from the standpoint of mutations and the genetics of the tumor, I think what you're saying is it's so important to also talk about your other questions.
So it's not just about the cancer itself, but your questions about fertility and your quality of life concerns around whether or not you might need a colostomy or not. All of these are important things to sort of talk through.

Cercek: Absolutely. I mean, that's why we opened the center in the first place, right? It was really twofold. One was because we were baffled by all these young patients that we were seeing and didn't understand why, and so it was kind of a research focus with the prospective registry and looking at the tumor genomics like we talked about.
But the other, and you know, equally as important piece, was that we were just seeing patients 30, 40 years old. You know, you see them in your oncology clinic or radiation oncology or surgery clinic and they are incredibly anxious to just start off with the best treatment, focusing on cancer-directed care, which is important, which is obviously what we do.
But there’s an entire patient, as I said, there’s a whole life that happens after their cancer treatment and hopefully after their cure, that should also be paid attention to. And so really our focus was to bring all of the services that we had available, but were a bit scattered, and you know, you really had to think about kind of referring to bring them up front to treatment when they start and having those conversations in terms of: Is fertility important?
We learned very quickly that even someone in their mid-forties, even someone with very advanced disease, where we felt the odds of survival were unfortunately low, wanted to have that conversation. They wanted to think about maybe sperm banking so their partner could use it. They wanted to think about egg harvesting and at least be empowered to have that conversation.
And so that was a very important piece that we wanted to bring in early on into the discussion. Everyone meets with a social worker. Most of our patients want to know how to talk to their kids. Some people actually end up having caregiver counseling or just couples counseling or various ways to help them navigate through their illness.
And then of course, psychology, psychiatry, nutrition, and integrative medicine, and just really to help with the cancer fight, right? Because it's not just about the chemo, it's not just about the drugs — it's the mindset, and the patients’ and the families’ or caregivers’ well-being.

Pathak: Yeah, I'm so glad that you mentioned these pieces as well. So I'm very interested in lifestyle medicine as a field, and we are learning a lot more around nutrition, physical activity, stress management, the importance of sleep for chronic conditions — definitely for blood pressure, diabetes, et cetera — but really around when you're undergoing cancer treatment.
So can you talk a little bit about what pieces have the best evidence?

Cercek: Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, we are just learning, is the truth. I think we know that a healthy diet and exercise are critically important. It is hard to do sometimes on chemo. I always tell my patients: on the bad days, don’t set yourself up for failure — just relax. On the good days, if you're up for it, do as much as you can.
Definitely in survivorship, we have data that a healthy diet and daily exercise actually improve outcomes. There are some data for aspirin, for muscle mass to help with chemo, and actual physical exercise. So those data are very much emerging. In oncology, we have a few trials looking at just exercise on its own actually eliminating or decreasing the chances of recurrence.
There was a recent publication in The New England Journal in addition to adjuvant therapy, the importance of exercise. We have an ongoing study at Memorial addressing that as well. So I think this field is very, very much emerging now in oncology, but I agree with you.
It's really important, and I always tell patients the mindset is so important — and that's such a hard one to study. But the more support they can have, the better place they are in. For some people, that’s exercise. For some people, that’s psychological support or social support, whatever the case may be.
There’s a lot that can be done and improved with that, for sure.

Pathak: What are you most excited about coming down the pipeline — in your work and in your field in general?

Cercek: I think, you know, two things. I would say that the advancements that we're making in colorectal cancer, specifically in treatment — you know, I'm personally really excited about neoadjuvant therapy, about immunotherapy, and just learning more about the ways to really turn on the immune system for treatment of colorectal cancer.
That is something that I'm really passionate about and very much excited about. But then also, in metastatic disease — I mean, I think we've made huge strides in the last five years, and I think the next five years are going to be even more exciting.
And then also, I think the idea of prevention, which is not my field of research, but I think is incredibly important and very, very exciting at the moment — you know, not just with vaccines, but early detection and prevention. I think we're going to make so much progress in that field really probably over the next five to ten years that it will hopefully drastically change this conversation. And all these numbers that are going up and up and up — hopefully we'll put that to an end.

Pathak: That's great. That's really heartening to hear. And then I'd love to end with just — if you could bust a myth right now. What would you say to someone who's listening?

Cercek: You know, what we hear a lot about is that academic centers — research-focused centers — are sort of scary because they want to jump into something experimental and don’t think about the whole patient and are just so focused on the research aspects, the tissue collection. That is absolutely not true.
We very much pride ourselves on taking the absolute best care of the patient, the family, the caregivers — everything — in addition to doing research to try to improve care for those individuals. So it's really not a scary place to go.
We hear that a lot, and people don’t necessarily see us until much later on in their diagnosis, which is obviously much harder to treat. So I think the earlier that patients can get to larger academic research centers, I honestly think the better. And I really want to tell people that it's not a scary place — we’re here to help.

Pathak: Thank you so much for joining us. My key takeaways from this discussion are that rates of younger-onset colorectal and GI cancers are rising, not just in the U.S. but in what appears to be a global trend.
The cause appears to be multifactorial, involving diet, lifestyle, environmental exposures, medication use — in particular, antibiotics — and other yet unknown factors.
The other key takeaway is: don’t wait, and don’t assume. Screening and symptom awareness are critical, especially if you have a family history.
Routine colonoscopy screenings are now recommended at age 45 for average-risk adults because many adults are diagnosed after symptoms appear. Dr. Cercek stressed the importance of consulting your healthcare provider if you notice persistent changes in bowel habits, rectal bleeding, unexplained weight loss, abdominal pain, or anemia — even if you are younger than 45.
Groundbreaking research is being done in immunotherapy, which may, in some cases, eliminate the need for surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation in select patients. This makes us hopeful about what’s to come, and it's important to ask your healthcare provider about all of these treatment options.
As you’ve often heard me say on this podcast, a healthy lifestyle is key. That includes a healthy diet, regular exercise, and stress management. This discussion with Dr. Cercek was an important reminder that prevention, early detection, intervention, and biomarker-driven treatment are the next major steps to identifying and managing cancer.
To find out more information about Dr. Andrea Cercek, make sure to check out our show notes. Thank you so much for listening. Please take a moment to follow, rate, and review this podcast on your favorite listening platform. If you’d like to send me an email about topics you are interested in or questions for future guests, please send me a note at [email protected]. This is Dr. Neha Pathak for the WebMD Health Discovered Podcast.