Researchers continue to focus projects on finding the key to offering physicians a reliable method for offering personalized treatment to their cancer patients. While oncologists tend to rely on the combination chemotherapy treatment of pemetrexed and cisplatin for mesothelioma patients, researchers now believe that by "profiling genetic alterations in cancer with drug sensitivity" they may be able to identify an effective alternative for patients who do not respond to the treatment.
Mesothelioma, an incurable asbestos-caused cancer, is one of many cancers which doctors have limited resources for treating effectively. The aggressive cancer often metastasizes quickly, ruling out surgery and rendering other treatments ineffective.
In a five-year collaboration between the Cancer Genome Project at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the Center for Molecular Therapeutics, Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, the research team hopes to build a database of hundreds of associations between mutations in cancer genes and sensitivity to anticancer drugs.
The group has conducted the "largest study of its kind" in profiling genetic alterations in cancer with drug sensitivity as a way to develop a tailored approach to treating patients with cancer. As an example of their types of discoveries, they found that a medication currently used for ovarian and breast cancer was effective in treating Ewing's sarcoma, a childhood bone cancer.
"Our research has taken us down unknown paths to find associations that are completely novel," says Dr Cyril Benes, senior author from Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center.
In an article published in Nature last month, the researchers reported that "there is an intimate relationship between the way a drug works and the genetic changes present in cancers." By highlighting how the genetic makeup determines response to a drug, doctors can "use cancer therapeutics in the most effective way by correctly targeting patients that are most likely to respond to a specific therapy," said Dr Mathew Garnett, first author from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.
The researchers looked at how genetic changes in more than 600 cancer cell lines effects responses to 130 anti-cancer drugs.
The team hopes their open-access database will be an important resource for the cancer research community and will ultimately lead to improved treatments for patients.
For mesothelioma patients that are often left with no effective treatment if their first round of chemotherapy proves ineffective, a database identifying potential drugs that could be used could make a difference in their prognosis. Targeted therapies allow oncologists to offer mesothelioma patients the right treatment at the right time that are based on the patients' unique genetic characteristics.
Sources:
Personalized Cancer Therapy – Profiling Genetic Changes
The Path To Personalised Cancer Treatment
