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(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 patients clinical characteristics with a genomic profile of her tumor can provide information for predicting the patients 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 Dukes Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy. The combination of these two methods -- one of which uses the clinical description of a patients breast cancer, while the other looks at gene expression at a molecular level in a patients 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.
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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.
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SOURCE: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 2008;299:1574-1587
This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, who offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, go to: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.
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