Cancer gene therapy treatment studies have beneficent goals, just as many therapies do. That is, based on predetermined sets of goals that are specific and defined, these goals are cancer treatment proactive and positive.

With an obvious end--the betterment, maintenance, and/or overall mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual well being of cancer patients-cancer gene therapy treatment scientists seek first to understand the genetic basis of cancer (according to researchers at Yale Cancer Center).

Moreover, as is typical of treatment therapies, cancer gene therapy treatment standards include two types of treatment goals-the functional outcome and the enabling goals. These goals include, writes Dr. Albert B. Diesseroth,

1. the identification of those genetic changes which are exerting a dominant influence on the natural history of the disease and its resistance to therapy and:
2. the formulation of strategies to reverse these biologically and clinically dominant changes within the cancer cells so as to arrest the progression of the disease, increase sensitivity to therapy, and increase survival of the cancer patient." (www.info.med.yale.edu)

So the functional outcome goal (which pinpoints the intended measurable health conditions that come as a result of the therapy) might be that the cancer patient show no evidence of continued cancer growth/malignancy/metastasizing. The cancer is, in other words, halted, removed, gone. The enabling goal will identify how the scientists and therapists will help the patient/client reach these stages of healing.

To do this gargantuan task, researchers and practitioners in the cancer field place great importance on the character and modes taken of such goals-whether they are short term goals or long term goals. In the case of cancer gene therapy treatment, the goals are of course:

1. expected to be reachable,
2. to have positive results that positively affect the life of the client,
3. to be relevant and reflective of what the client needs, and
4. to have a measurable standards.

This involves complex design of phenomenal strategies-to develop "recombinant vectors," make use of the "discovery of the genetic programs which govern the proliferation and differentiation of normal and neoplastic cells," and to subsequently continue the reparative therapy of neoplastic cells." And to do this, the round-the-clock cancer gene therapy treatment geniuses stay resolute, determined to not only heal but cure cancer.