SATURDAY, June 2 (HealthDay News) -- U.S. researchers say they've developed new tests that can determine the precise genetic pathways that lead to lung cancer.
Being able to examine these genomic "signatures" may provide patients with alternatives to chemotherapy. For example, patients may be able to be treated with drugs that target the specific faulty pathway that caused their cancer, the researchers said.
"Traditional chemotherapy is not always effective. Even when we are able to match the right chemotherapy with the right patient, 70 percent of patients with lung cancer may not respond to therapy. We need to take a different approach to those patients, and that is where these targeted therapies come in," lead investigator Dr. Anil Potti, an assistant professor of medicine at the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy, said in a prepared statement.
The tests developed by the Duke team work by scanning thousands of genes taken from the tumors of cancer patients. The cells are kept alive in laboratory cultures to produce a genomic profile of the tumor's molecular makeup, which helps identify the faulty pathways that caused the malignancy.
In this study, the researchers treated laboratory lung cancer tumors with drugs that blocked one of three different pathways. In all cases, the tumors responded to the targeted therapy.
The findings were to be presented Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, in Chicago.
The Duke researchers said they plan to begin a clinical trial of the genomic tests in lung cancer patients this year.
Being able to examine these genomic "signatures" may provide patients with alternatives to chemotherapy. For example, patients may be able to be treated with drugs that target the specific faulty pathway that caused their cancer, the researchers said.
"Traditional chemotherapy is not always effective. Even when we are able to match the right chemotherapy with the right patient, 70 percent of patients with lung cancer may not respond to therapy. We need to take a different approach to those patients, and that is where these targeted therapies come in," lead investigator Dr. Anil Potti, an assistant professor of medicine at the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy, said in a prepared statement.
The tests developed by the Duke team work by scanning thousands of genes taken from the tumors of cancer patients. The cells are kept alive in laboratory cultures to produce a genomic profile of the tumor's molecular makeup, which helps identify the faulty pathways that caused the malignancy.
In this study, the researchers treated laboratory lung cancer tumors with drugs that blocked one of three different pathways. In all cases, the tumors responded to the targeted therapy.
The findings were to be presented Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, in Chicago.
The Duke researchers said they plan to begin a clinical trial of the genomic tests in lung cancer patients this year.
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