Genes Can Predict the Relapse After Chemotherapy

This research, found in an article from ScienceDaily , was done in an attempt to see the linkage between genes and being able to predict how well chemotherapy would work on a given patient. The data from the researchers from the National Taiwan Universsity College of Medicine and the National Cancer Institute were used. Sixty human cancer cells and their pattern of activation were tested to see their response to 99 different anti-cancer drugs. Out of all those, eight genes were found to be involved in invasion and had a correlation in the relative activation and chemotherapy outcome. The five drugs that had the most impact were paclitaxel, docetaxel, erlotinib, everolimus, and dasatinib.

The research indicated that patients with lung and breast cancer who were plaved in the low-risk group, based on their genes, spent a longer time being relapse free. Professor Pan-Chyr Yang believes that this discovery is crucial to improving cancer treatment in patients. It also would be beneficial in individualizing cancer treatments, and can hopefully one day be applied to other forms of cancer other than lung and breast.

I believe that personalized chemotherapy can be a great new way to treat cancer. Cancer is not the same in every person and it only makes sense if they are all treated differently. Choosing a personalized chemotherapy does come with it's costs, and it might not be affordable to all, as is explained in the following article. I do also worry about the financial and time consuming aspects of the research itself, however I suspect it will all be worth it.