Gene Test Hope For Personalised Breast Cancer Treatment
Cancer Research UK scientists have developed a system to identify faulty or missing genes that could prevent specific chemotherapy regimes from working. This opens the doors for targeted breast cancer treatment, according to research published in the Lancet Oncology.
An international team of scientists led by Cancer Research UK’s London Research Institute* together with the Technical University of Denmark developed a bespoke method to scan 829 genes involved in response to a breast cancer drug, in breast cancer tumour cells. They selected those which if missing or faulty would prevent a chemotherapy drug called paclitaxel, from working effectively in patients with breast cancer.
Taxanes** block the growth of cancer cells by stopping cell division. The group includes paclitaxel (Taxol) and docetaxel (Taxotere) which is given to patients with breast cancer before surgery.
The team used a technique called RNA interference*** to delete each of the 829 genes, one at time in cancer cells, to explore how well paclitaxel worked in tumour cells if one particular gene was not working normally.
They narrowed the search down to find six genes which if faulty prevent paclitaxel from working effectively in breast cancer cells in the laboratory. They then showed in patients that these same six genes in breast cancer cells could be used to predict which of them will derive the most benefit from paclitaxel before they are exposed to treatment. Read more
Drug Benefits Patients With Inherited Ovarian Cancer
A new type of cancer drug has shown promising results in patients with ovarian cancer linked to an inherited mutation, a disease for which current treatment options are limited. The trial results are published today in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) and The Royal Marsden Hospital, working with pharmaceutical company KuDOS Pharmaceuticals, now a subsidiary of AstraZeneca *, found the experimental drug olaparib shrank or stabilised tumours in around half of ovarian cancer patients bearing BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations.
The five-year survival rate for ovarian cancer is just 40 per cent as the majority of patients are diagnosed with an advanced form of the disease. Most patients initially respond well to radical surgery and platinum and taxane-based chemotherapy, but relapse after an average of 18 months. Subsequent treatments generally become less effective as patients build up resistance.
“There is an urgent need to find new drugs for women diagnosed with ovarian cancer,” says Professor Stan Kaye, Head of the Section of Medicine at the ICR and Head of the Drug Development Unit at The Royal Marsden Hospital and a Cancer Research UK-funded scientist. “Olaparib is still in early-stage testing but the results so far are very encouraging. These findings raise the possibility that carefully selected patients in future may well be offered olaparib as an alternative to chemotherapy during the course of their treatment.”
Between 2005 and 2008, about 50 women with confirmed or suspected BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations began treatment with olaparib in a dose escalation and single-stage expansion of a Phase I trial. Twenty patients responded with their tumours shrinking or with significant falls in their ovarian cancer marker CA125, or both. The disease also stabilised in a further three patients. The drug was effective for an average of seven months, while several patients are still taking olaparib for nearly two years. Side-effects were generally mild, especially when compared to current chemotherapy treatments. Read more