New hope for aggressive cancer treatment

Chemotherapy for one of the deadliest forms of breast cancer can be personalised and improved with genetic testing, new research suggests.

Women with aggressive “triple-negative” disease fare much better on a nonstandard chemotherapy drug if they have inherited BRCA gene mutations, the results show.

Currently most patients with this type of breast cancer, which does not respond to hormone therapies or the targeted drug Herceptin, are treated with the chemotherapy agent docetaxel.

But the trial findings show that those with defective versions of the genes BRCA 1 or BRCA 2 are more likely to benefit from a different chemo drug, carboplatin. The results are likely to change guidelines by introducing genetic testing for women with triple-negative breast cancer.