Lung cancer researchers suspect therapy can be targeted to specific patients
In an ever advancing world of medicine in our society, new methods of “personalized medicine” are being discovered. Houston scientists are reporting evidence that lung cancer treatment can be individualized based on a patient's tumor characteristics, a first for the usually fatal disease.
Results from an unusual biopsy-mandated study conducted at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center showed matched treatments to specific molecular signatures, or biomarkers. Some pairings identified in the study were shown to improve survival.
Dr. Edward Kim, a professor of thoracic oncology and the study's principal investigator, claims, “this trial changes the landscape of lung cancer research.” “It suggests we can supplant existing toxic therapies with drugs targeted for the right population” he says.
This study is supposed to lead to smaller, more precise clinical trials where lung cancer sufferers take part in target therapy, or treatment based on their own particular biomarker. Larger lung cancer research studies done in the past, open to all patients have “historically showed minor effects because they don't tease out the patient subset that might benefit from a particular drug,” Kim said.
Targeted therapy such as Herceptin and Gleevec have radically enhanced the treatment of breast cancer and leukemia, but no clinically relevant biomarkers have been found for lung cancer, which kills 160,000 Americans a year, more than any other cancer. Since patients are set apart only by the specific anatomy of their tumors (i.e. small cell or nonsmall cell lung cancer), doctors have limited treatment options.
Biopsies from 225 patients were taken in the M.D. Anderson study, in which they were analyzed for which of five molecular signatures fueled their growth and assigned them to one of four therapies, most either still experimental or for other cancers. All the patients had advanced lung cancer and been previously treated with chemotherapy. The average life expectancy for advanced lung cancer patients is eight months.
The article states that “the study found evidence that each of the drugs targeted specific molecular signatures better than the other three. Overall, it found 46 percent of patients gained “disease control,” nonprogression of a tumor seen as an indicator of survival, after two months of targeted treatment, compared with untargeted therapy's 30 percent disease control rate in advanced lung cancer patients historically.”
One of the study's patients was a man from Atlanta, Georgia who went to M.D. Anderson soon after he was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer, the day after his son was born. The metastasis has been reduced to practically nonexistent and the tumor in the lower left lobe has been reduced significantly, the article says. His son is now 3½.
For the study, the first 97 patients were uniformly randomized to the four groups. But as the trial went on, patients were more likely to be matched with a drug that had been effective for earlier patients with the same biomarkers.
Biomarkers matched to those drugs used in the trial prevented disease progression in up to 71 percent of patients. In less successful matches, the prevention of disease typically occurred in about 30 or less percent of patients. Only 6.5 percent of patients experienced any significant side effects.
I found this study to be a very interesting advancement because the idea of being able to personalize treatments of cancer to more effectively treat them is amazing. I hope that more is done to pursue this new therapy, so it can be used to save more lives.
Link to article: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/health/6964927.html
Charlcie Northrop
VTPP 435-502
Results from an unusual biopsy-mandated study conducted at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center showed matched treatments to specific molecular signatures, or biomarkers. Some pairings identified in the study were shown to improve survival.
Dr. Edward Kim, a professor of thoracic oncology and the study's principal investigator, claims, “this trial changes the landscape of lung cancer research.” “It suggests we can supplant existing toxic therapies with drugs targeted for the right population” he says.
This study is supposed to lead to smaller, more precise clinical trials where lung cancer sufferers take part in target therapy, or treatment based on their own particular biomarker. Larger lung cancer research studies done in the past, open to all patients have “historically showed minor effects because they don't tease out the patient subset that might benefit from a particular drug,” Kim said.
Targeted therapy such as Herceptin and Gleevec have radically enhanced the treatment of breast cancer and leukemia, but no clinically relevant biomarkers have been found for lung cancer, which kills 160,000 Americans a year, more than any other cancer. Since patients are set apart only by the specific anatomy of their tumors (i.e. small cell or nonsmall cell lung cancer), doctors have limited treatment options.
Biopsies from 225 patients were taken in the M.D. Anderson study, in which they were analyzed for which of five molecular signatures fueled their growth and assigned them to one of four therapies, most either still experimental or for other cancers. All the patients had advanced lung cancer and been previously treated with chemotherapy. The average life expectancy for advanced lung cancer patients is eight months.
The article states that “the study found evidence that each of the drugs targeted specific molecular signatures better than the other three. Overall, it found 46 percent of patients gained “disease control,” nonprogression of a tumor seen as an indicator of survival, after two months of targeted treatment, compared with untargeted therapy's 30 percent disease control rate in advanced lung cancer patients historically.”
One of the study's patients was a man from Atlanta, Georgia who went to M.D. Anderson soon after he was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer, the day after his son was born. The metastasis has been reduced to practically nonexistent and the tumor in the lower left lobe has been reduced significantly, the article says. His son is now 3½.
For the study, the first 97 patients were uniformly randomized to the four groups. But as the trial went on, patients were more likely to be matched with a drug that had been effective for earlier patients with the same biomarkers.
Biomarkers matched to those drugs used in the trial prevented disease progression in up to 71 percent of patients. In less successful matches, the prevention of disease typically occurred in about 30 or less percent of patients. Only 6.5 percent of patients experienced any significant side effects.
I found this study to be a very interesting advancement because the idea of being able to personalize treatments of cancer to more effectively treat them is amazing. I hope that more is done to pursue this new therapy, so it can be used to save more lives.
Link to article: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/health/6964927.html
Charlcie Northrop
VTPP 435-502
posted by Charlcie Northrop at 8:41 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home