In a trial of breast cancer patients, the test proved able to indicate who would benefit from the most common chemotherapy drug within 24 hours.
Patients currently have to undergo a 12 week course of the treatment, which is known for its unpleasant side effects, before doctors can tell whether they are responding.
Anthracyline, the most commonly-used chemotherapy drug for breast cancer, is only effective in about a quarter of the 46,000 women who are diagnosed with the disease each year.
The new test would help the remaining three quarters of suffers avoid months of distress and discomfort before finding out that their treatment has not worked. They could then be transferred to alternative drugs or hormone treatments.
The test, which was developed at the Institute for Cancer Research (ICR) in London, is expected to be similarly effective at predicting how patients will respond to chemotherapy for ovarian cancers and could be adapted for other forms of the disease.
It works by measuring the levels of RAD51 – a protein which helps repair DNA in damaged cells – in tissue taken from tumours.
A quarter of all breast cancer patients carry a genetic variant that disables the protein in cancer cells, meaning that they are unable to repair themselves after being targeted by chemotherapy.
But RAD51 remains effective in the remaining three quarters of cancer sufferers, making their tumours more resistant to chemotherapy.
Caroline Hoffman, of the charity Breast Cancer Haven, said: “This is a welcome step towards targeting breast cancer treatments to the individual, which will help reduce unnecessary suffering and side effects.”
0 comments:
Post a Comment