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´Personalized´ Therapy Targets Brain Tumors
November 10, 2005 9:00AM
Until now, doctors haven´t been able to explain why the drugs Iressa and Tarceva help some patients but not others. The pills belong to a new class of "targeted" therapies that block precise growth signals inside cancer cells while largely sparing healthy tissue and causing fewer side effects.
Doctors have found a way to personalize cancer therapy for patients with a type of brain tumor called glioblastoma.
The discovery could change the way some patients are treated, says Paul Mischel, an associate professor at Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of California-Los Angeles and lead author of a paper in today´s New England Journal of Medicine.
Until now, doctors haven´t been able to explain why the drugs Iressa and Tarceva help some patients but not others. The pills belong to a new class of "targeted" therapies that block precise growth signals inside cancer cells while largely sparing healthy tissue and causing fewer side effects.
Mischel and his colleagues discovered that the drugs seem to work best in brain cancer patients whose tumors make two particular proteins. Patients with these proteins live an average of 22 months after beginning treatment, while those without the proteins survive only six months.
Mischel says he hopes to develop ways to test for these proteins so doctors can prescribe Iressa or Tarceva right away to the patients most likely to benefit. The findings need to be confirmed in more definitive studies, he says. Neither Iressa nor Tarceva cures brain cancer, and only 10 percent to 20 percent of patients seem to make these proteins.
Mischel hopes to help other glioblastoma patients by finding genetic patterns in their tumors.
Experts are excited that targeted therapies, which already are approved in cancers of the lung, colon and breast, now may help patients with brain tumors. Jan Buckner, a professor at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, says he is encouraged by even modest progress against such a dreaded disease.
About 8,600 Americans are diagnosed with glioblastomas every year. Fewer than 4 percent survive five years, according to the National Brain Tumor Foundation.
© 2005 USA Today.
© 2005 Top Tech News.