Breakthrough cancer test predicts whether chemotherapy will work

Summary

Experts hope tests will be used after diagnosis to classify patients as either “chemotherapy resistant” or “chemotherapy sensitive” to treatments, to avoid giving them therapies that will not work.Dr Iain Foulkes, the executive director of research and innovation at Cancer Research UK, which helped fund the research, said: “The days of chemotherapy being offered as a ‘one-size-fits-all’ treatment are ending.“Thanks to this research, we are moving towards a future where personalised cancer treatment is an option for many patients. Only by delivering more optimised, successful treatment will more people live longer, better lives, free from the fear of cancer.”Researchers are now working with the pharmaceutical industry to develop the test and will be applying to regulators for its use in the clinic. They are also developing further tests for other targeted cancer drugs to find out how widely the technology could be used across different cancer types.Dr Ania Piskorz, the head of genomics at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute and the co-lead author, said: “It was important to us to create a test that could be easily adopted in the clinic, using material we already collect during diagnosis and well-established genomic sequencing methods.“The test is based on the full DNA sequence that we get from these methods, and we can adapt it to work alongside other genomic sequencing methods that are commonly used to personalise treatment for cancer.”The study was published in the journal Nature Genetics.