According to a recently published article, a London cancer research firm has developed a test that can determine whether or not a woman with breast cancer will respond to two types of treatment within 24 hours of having started it.
Developed at London's Breakthrough Breast Cancer Research Centre, part of the Institute of Cancer Research, the test can ascertain:
- Whether the patient will respond to anthracycline-based chemotherapy, part of rather standard treatment guidelines for many patients with breast cancer. Anthracyclines include doxorubicin (Adriamycin) and daunorubicin, and, while effective, are known to cause cardiopulmonary toxicity.
- Whether the patient might respond to PARP-inhibitors, a new class of anti-cancer drugs currently in clinical trials.
Twenty-four hours, when set against twelve weeks, would be a major breakthrough, and could possibly spare hundreds of thousands of breast cancer patients needless weeks of chemotherapy and all that comes with it.
CANCER TYPE(S)
Breast cancer
TREATMENT TYPE(S)
Chemotherapy, PARP inhibitors, personalized medicine
WHERE WAS THIS RESEARCH PUBLISHED?
Clinical Cancer Research
By Ross Bonander
Source
Graeser MK et al. "A marker of homologous recombination predicts pathological complete response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in primary breast cancer." Clin Cancer Res. Published OnlineFirst August 27, 2010; doi: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-10-1027
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