Test finds best drug for chemo
Biopsied tumour study costs $3,900
VANCOUVER — Cancer patients across Canada are now being offered, for $3,900, a personalized lab test on their biopsied tumour specimen to help predict the chemotherapy drugs most effective at killing their particular cancer cells.
The new technology, called Correct-Chemo, is used at a lab in Montreal. It tests different drugs on the live specimen to find out which kill off the most cancerous cells in a process called apoptosis.
Typically, oncologists choose chemotherapy regimes based on statistical evidence from clinical trials and generally do not match drugs to specific patients’ tumours unless special molecular or genetic tests are used. Some chemotherapy drugs have been developed to specifically target gene mutations in tumours.
The Montreal company, DiaTech Oncology Corp., will now begin marketing the new test directly to patients (it’s not covered by any provincial public health insurance plans). The company is owned by Andrew Miller, a wealthy health technology investor in Nashville.
DiaTech is contacting health ministries in various provinces to get technology assessments underway for the purpose of getting tests covered through government funding.
The company says the test takes trial and error out of the chemotherapy agent decision-making equation and will give patients the best chemotherapy regimen first.
“It is the only test available that can identify, within 72 hours, the most effective chemotherapy drugs,” says Yasmine Nouhi, spokeswoman for DiaTech. Nouhi said the company’s focus for the past decade has been on proving the test’s validity through research trials involving about 1,500 cancer patients. Now that it believes there’s enough evidence, it is launching a marketing campaign. So far, about 50 patients in Ontario and Quebec have paid for the service.
Dr. Marianne Taylor, vicepresident (interim) of systemic therapy for the B.C. Cancer Agency, acknowledged there are recent, peerreviewed studies showing that the “chemotherapy sensitivity analysis test” looks promising. But oncologists aren’t yet convinced that it’s ready for prime time, she noted, so it’s still in the needs-further-study category.