A major trial of a new drug treatment for inherited, advanced breast and ovarian cancer is under way in the UK, it was announced today.
It is based at the Oxford Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre at Oxford University. Dr Shibani Nicum is leading the trial, focussing on a drug called 6MP.
She explained: "PARP inhibitors are a powerful new class of drugs developed specifically to target tumours caused by BRCA 1 and BRCA2 faults, but drug resistance remains a problem. We hope that the very encouraging results we have seen in early laboratory studies involving 6MP will lead to increased treatment options for these patients in the future."
6MP is currently used to treat leukaemia, often given together with another chemotherapy drug called methotrexate. Laboratory tests suggest it may kill breast cancer cells, even when the cells have developed resistance to other drug treatments.
Professor Mark Middleton at the Oxford centre says that 15 per cent of breast and ovarian cancer cases are caused by faults in BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes, which make the cells less able to repair DNA damage.
"It’s exciting to see drugs being developed for specific groups of patients who share the same underlying genetic faults in their cancer," he said. "Targeted treatments are at the cutting edge of cancer care and we’re proud to be involved in bringing such drugs a step closer to the clinic."
Dr Sally Burtles of the funders, Cancer Research UK, highlighted the importance of having access to patients who share specific rare faults in their tumours.
"This will be crucial as we move towards a new era of personalised medicine with treatments targeted according to the individual biological profile of a patient’s cancer," she believes.
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