Blood test that tells if breast cancer drugs work
A SMART blood test dramatically slows the spread of breast cancer.
The new test, developed in Britain, spots when the most common form of breast cancer has stopped responding to standard treatments. It then tells doctors which drug to give patients.
A trial of nearly 800 women showed that using precisely matched drugs gave doctors twice as much time to halt the progression of the disease.
Being able to rapidly switch drugs is crucial in the treatment of cancer, because tumours evolve and become resistant to medicines.
But until now doctors have only been able to switch drugs when a patient starts getting sick again, or by using a painful biopsy to analyse the tumour.
The new test, which could be available on the NHS within three years, allows doctors to act far more quickly, alerting them as soon as the cancer starts resisting the drug’s effect.
It is one of the first in a series of ‘liquid biopsies’ that experts think will revolutionise treatment.
The sensitive tests pick up minute
‘Beginning to show real promise’
strands of DNA that are shed by a tumour as it grows.
Trials carried out by the Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden Hospital in London found that by using the tests, and then moving patients on to a drug matched to the tumour’s genetic make-up, doctors were able to halt the progress of breast cancer for six months.
Women who were treated with a drug that had not been DNA-matched only had two and a half months before the tumour started spreading again.
Writing in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, study leader Dr Nicholas Turner said: ‘For the first time we should able to use a potentially simple test to help us pick the best treatment for women with advanced cancer after their initial treatment has failed.’
Baroness Delyth Morgan, chief executive of the Breast Cancer Now charity, said: ‘Liquid biopsies are beginning to show real promise. This exciting study shows that they could be used to ensure women with secondary breast cancer get the drugs most likely to control their disease for longer’.