Glossary

In many sarcoma trials, there are two arms to the trial. In one arm you get the treatment that is being tested and in the other arm a placebo—which is no new treatment. Often you'll have
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The phase of a study tells you a little bit about how confident the researchers are in the result. A Phase I study is mostly done to see what dosage is tolerated and it's not designed to find out if the treatment works. This means that even if someone responds well to a Phase I treatment, it may not prove that the treatment works. Phase II involves more patients and is designed to evaluate if there is a good chance that the treatment helps. If it does then a Phase III trial is started with even more patients and if successful the treatment might be recognized by the FDA as a useful one. Sarcoma patients often will join Phase I or Phase II trials because there are not as many treatments that have made it to a phase III trial,
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As cancer cells multiply errors are made in replicating the DNA of the cells. If there are a lot of mutations in the cancer cells of a particular tumor that may mean that it is less like a normal tissue and more like a cancer. But it also means that there are more mutations for the patient's immune system to spot and then kill those cells. Also, immune boosting treatments (e.g. immmunotherapy) appear to work better if a tumor has more mutations, perhaps because the cancer cells look less like normal cells.
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A pathologist is a doctor who is expert in looking at tissue (e.g. cancer tissue obtained during surgery) and determining just what kind of cancer it is and how aggressive (how fast multiplying and invadingthe cancer cells) are. A pathologist confirmed diagnosis depends on them having a look at the cancer obtained from the patient either during surgery to remove the tumor or a biospsy to study the tumnor.
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