Medical oncology services

Medical oncologists treat cancer with medications, including chemotherapeutic drugs, biological agents and therapies that work with the patient’s immune system.

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Team Strategy

At UC Irvine Medical Center, our medical oncologists are part of a team that treats patients affected by a wide range of cancers and blood disorders. They work together with other specialists at the Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center to diagnose, evaluate and treat all malignant disorders.  These include solid-tumor cancers such as melanoma, colon, breast and prostate cancer, as well as malignancies of the blood such as leukemia and lymphoma.

Treatment Plan

Cancer patients at UC Irvine Medical Center benefit from an individualized treatment plan tailored to their specific condition. In many cases, this includes chemotherapy following another procedure, such as surgery.

In addition, our oncology team may often recommend a neoadjuvant strategy, in which a therapy is given before a primary treatment. For example, radiation or chemotherapy can be used to shrink a tumor before surgery.  This may make it possible to perform minimally invasive procedures rather than more invasive ones, reducing trauma and improving patient outcomes.

Novel Therapies

In addition to conventional treatments, our medical oncologists are also active in clinical testing of novel therapies.  These include state-of-the-art drugs and new biological and immunological modifiers being investigated in clinical trials. As a university medical center, we typically have dozens of clinical trials in progress addressing different conditions, including “refractory” cancers that do not respond to standard treatments.  Through participation in clinical trials, patients at UC Irvine Medical Center can gain access to new therapies long before they become available to the general public.

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