Test may ‘revolutionise’ treatment of cancer

A GENETIC “fingerprint” test has been developed that matches cancer patients to the right chemotherapy drugs.

The breakthrough could mean an end to “trial and error” cancer treatment. Instead, doctors will know immediately which drugs most aggressively and effectively attack an individual patient’s cancer.

One scientist involved in the research said the test could potentially “revolutionise cancer care”.

Science is moving ever closer towards an age of personalised medicine, when treatments will be tailored according to patients’ genetic profiles.

The new research reported today in the journal Nature Medicine is a significant step towards that goal.

The test works by scanning thousands of genes from a patient’s tumour to produce a “fingerprint” of its molecular make-up.

Working in the laboratory, scientists used the technique to match the most effective chemotherapy drugs to tumours from patients with breast and ovarian cancer, and leukaemia.

They found that the test predicted with 80% accuracy how the patients responded to various treatments. Researchers pioneering the new approach at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, US, hope to begin a clinical trial with breast cancer patients next year.

This will compare patients receiving treatment guided by genetic profiling and those whose drugs are selected in the traditional trial and error manner.

Senior investigator Professor Joseph Nevins, from the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, said: “Over 400,000 patients in the United States are treated with chemotherapy each year, without a firm basis for which drug they receive.

“We believe these genomic tests have the potential to revolutionise cancer care by identifying the right drug for each individual patient.”

Currently, doctors normally try various established drugs on cancer patients to see which work best.

As a result patients often undergo numerous toxic therapies that cause serious side effects.

“We believe this research can improve the efficiency of chemotherapy without changing the drugs currently used in standard practice,” said Mr Nevins.

“Rather, the tests simply provide an approach to better selection, within a repertoire of available drugs.”