Lab-grown mini tumours could put end to ‘trial and error’ cancer treatment
SCIENTISTS have discovered a way to develop “personalised” cancer treatment – by testing drugs on replica mini tumours grown in a laboratory.
The study by the Royal Marsden Hospital and the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in London found that cells taken from cancer patients could be used to grow replica tumours, allowing the scientists to keep testing drugs until they found the most likely cure.
Research on 71 patients found that testing drugs on these tumours was 100 per cent accurate in identifying drugs that did not work for individuals – and picked out drugs that shrank the tumours in almost nine out of 10 cases.
Scientists said the breakthrough was “extremely promising” because major advances in cancer treatment depend on personalising medicine, and targeting specific drugs to the right patients.
They said the change could bring an end to reliance on “trial and error” techniques in selecting cancer treatment, ensuring rapid access to drugs for patients facing a “race against time”.
Every patient could have mini tumours grown and tested for drug sensitivity before undergoing treatment allowing doctors to design a personalised regimen for them. The research was carried out on bowel, stomach and other digestive system cancers, and published in the journal Science.
Scientists took biopsy samples from patients with advanced bowel, gastrooesophageal or bile duct cancers, whose tumours had spread round the body, and who were enrolled in earlystage clinical trials. They used cells from these biopsy samples to grow a mini tumour in the lab, on which 55 types of drugs were tested. The results
‘It has the potential to help deliver truly personalised treatment – and avoid the reliance on trial and error’
were then compared with how the patient had responded in the clinic.
The study found that using the mini tumours to test the drugs was more accurate at predicting drug response than analysing the DNA code of the patient’s tumour alone.
Across all the patients, the original tumours and lab-grown mini tumours were found to be 96 per cent identical across 151 cancer-related genes – with very few new mutations since being grown in a dish.
Dr Nicola Valeri, the study leader, who is a team leader in gastrointestinal cancer biology and genomics at the ICR and a consultant medical oncologist at the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Once a cancer has spread round the body and stopped responding to standard treatments, we face a race against time to find patients a drug that might slow the cancer’s progression and extend their lives.
“We found that recreating patients’ tumours in the laboratory using this new technique gave us an extremely promising way to predict whether a drug would work for a patient.
“We were able to look in incredible detail at how tumours responded to drugs – including patterns of gene activity and mutation, and even how the cancer would evolve in response to treatment.”
“We need to further evaluate its potential in larger clinical studies, but it has the potential to help deliver truly personalised treatment – and avoid the reliance on trial and error for many patients when clinicians give them a new cancer drug.”
Prof Paul Workman, the chief executive of the ICR and one of the study’s co-authors, said the breakthrough could also speed up drug discovery and reduce reliance on animal experiments.