Cancer Cure News: Laboratory Grown Tumors Key To Personalizing Treatment, Research Reveals
A study has shown the potential of having customized cancer treatment in the future by growing mini-tumors taken from the cancer cells of the patient.
Based on the results of the research conducted by the Royal Marsden and Institute of Cancer Research, cancer cells taken from a patient can be replicated in the laboratory and will allow medical experts to identify what drug can effectively treat them. Out of the 71 patients subjected to the study, it has been revealed that medical experts had a 100 percent success rate in identifying the drugs that will not work on the subjects' respective tumors while identifying what will work on shrinking the tumor had a 90 percent success rate.
For the experts, the results of the study are nothing short of promising as it is believed that the major advances in cancer treatment depend on personalized drugs for patients. Because of this, cancer patients may soon be spared from a trial-and-error treatment, and will speed up the access of patients to drugs that can specifically work on them.
The research was conducted on 71 patients with advanced bowel, gastro-esophagal or bile duct cancers whose tumors had spread all over their body. The cells taken from the biopsy samples of the participating patients were then replicated in the laboratory and were eventually tested with 55 types of cancer drugs.
When the lab-grown tumors were compared to the patients' original tumors, it was revealed that they were 96 percent identical, with those grown in the petri-dish showing very few mutations.
"This study has shown that testing drugs on replica tumors before they are given to patients is not only possible but predicts how a patient will respond more accurately than simply looking at cancer's DNA. It could predict whether cancer will be drug-resistant before a person ever receives the treatment-which is especially important for those with advanced cancers where time is so precious," said the study's co-author, Professor Paul Workman.
