(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Not all breast cancers are the same, so why should
they be treated in the same way? Cancer care is moving to more individualized
treatments and now, a new study finds by looking at a patient’s clinical
characteristics with a genomic profile of her tumor can provide information for
predicting the patient’s prognosis and help guide for treatment options.
“Our goal is to treat patients on a more individualized basis, matching the
right drugs with the right patients,” says Anil Potti, M.D., an oncologist and
researchers at Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center and Duke’s Institute for Genome
Sciences & Policy. “The combination of these two methods -- one of which uses
the clinical description of a patient’s breast cancer, while the other looks at
gene expression at a molecular level in a patient’s tumor -- may allow us to do
that with unprecedented accuracy. This represents a robust approach to
personalizing treatment strategies in patients suffering from breast cancer.”
For the study, researchers looked at 1,000 breast tumor samples and patient
data, then applied a computerized system to assess clinical characteristics and
make predictions. The computerized system is known as Adjuvant!. They then
compared gene expression in tumor samples and were able to see patterns among
patients with aggressive cancers and those whose cancers were less likely to
recur.
Researchers say by using this data combined, they were able to not only say a
patient is at high risk for a recurrence, but be more specific and say that a
patient is, for example, 90 percent likely to see her cancer recur. Study
authors say this is important data because they can choose treatments
appropriately based on specific numbers.
This research is already being put to the test in several clinical trials at
Duke for cancer patients. One trial involving 300 patients with breast cancer is
expected to begin at Duke this spring.
SOURCE: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 2008;299:1574-1587
