British scientists have found a gene which decides which women with ovarian cancer benefit from treatment with the yew tree drug paclitaxel.
Women with the gene mutation need to have paclitaxel combined with carboplatin to get effective treatment, researchers found.
Those without the gene benefit from carboplatin but not from paclitaxel, according to the findings, reported to a conference of the American Society for Clinical Oncology at the weekend.
Scientists from Newcastle University, the UK Medical Research Council and the UCL Cancer Institute, London, worked together on the research, funded by Cancer Research UK and the MRC.
The faults are found in the gene p53 and mean that women treated with carboplatin alone are half as likely as others to survive treatment, the study found.
The findings came as researchers set out to find out why a trial of paclitaxel failed. The analysis of samples from 265 women revealed the role of p53.
The disease affects 6,500 women a year in the UK – and some 4,400 die from it. Paclitaxel was derived from the Pacific yew tree.
Researcher Professor Hilary Calvert said: "These results show that ovarian cancer patients whose tumour had a faulty p53 gene survive longer if given paclitaxel in addition to carboplatin.
"Although survival rates have improved dramatically in recent years, ovarian cancer remains a deadly cancer in women and efforts to improve survival by targeting treatments at those most likely to benefit are urgently needed."
Dr Lesley Walker, of Cancer Research UK, said: "There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all drug and increasingly scientists are developing ways to identify groups of patients that are most likely to respond to a particular drug."
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