A major European study of cancer care using precision medicine techniques has shown it can delay the progress of illness, it was announced today.
More than 1,000 patients with advanced disease took part in the research in Paris, France, and doctors were able to find individualised treatments for nearly 200 of them, a conference was being told.
Researchers said that patients who received targeted treatments enjoyed a 30% longer period of remission from cancer development than others. The extent of the respite ranged from five to 32 months.
Patients taking part in the study had already tried at least three other treatments and suffered from cancer of the lung, breast, head and neck, prostate, bladder, bowel or stomach.
The findings were reported to the Molecular Analysis for Personalised Therapy conference, backed by organisations including Cancer Research UK and the European Society of Medical Oncology.
Every patient had their genomes mapped and doctors found 411 patients with faulty molecules that might be targeted with non-standard treatments. In 199 cases, the doctors were also able to find experimental drugs to target these molecules.
Researcher Professor Jean Charles Soria, from the Gustave Roussy Cancer Campus, said: “This is the first precision medicine trial to show that analysing a person’s DNA improves treatment options for patients with late stage cancer.
“And these results are particularly exciting because in some cases we were testing experimental drugs, and found that we could slow down the growth of tumours in around one in five patients with advanced cancer.”
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