Gene test hope for personalised cancer therapy

NHS patients are offered personalized cancer treatment under a pilot project to conduct genetic testing on individual tumors.

Cancer Research UK hope the project will be up to 6,000 cancer patients per year for a series of genetic defects to be analyzed.

The results will guide physicians in choosing the most effective therapy for that patient.

The charity predicts that testing may become routine within five years.

Due to be launched in the autumn, the project will examine how best to roll-out of genetic testing in the NHS.

Six centers set up around the country where the scientists will classify the patient according to the tumor specific genetic mutations they carry.
Patients will be offered drug treatment based on the genetic makeup of their cancer.

Potentially, such an approach will enable the NHS to save money by cutting the prescribing expensive treatments that are likely to work.

Harpal Kumar, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, said scientists now have enough genetic markers and drugs for such tests to discover a real difference.

Cancer drugs developed in recent years specifically aimed at a genetic mutation, including breast cancer treatment Herceptin.
Routine Tests

Some genetic testing has been done in the NHS cancer patients, but provision is patchy and tumors are often tested only one mutation.

James Peach, director of the charity of stratified medicine, said they wanted a national program to build, so patients with cancer in the United Kingdom to benefit from the global genetic discoveries.

"Patients have their tumors genetically tested and receive treatment based on the evidence of what does and does not work for their type of tumor.

"The advantages for patients are clear: better treatments and avoiding unnecessary side effects. But it would allow us to investigate drug driving stratified by the inclusion of the effectiveness of certain treatments for each type of tumor."

He said the first phase of the project would be developed in collaboration with the NHS, industry and government.

Once they have proven that the approach works, the plan is to roll out the scheme for all patients.

The charity is looking for similar initiatives in the U.S. to determine which mutations to test the various forms of cancer.

Professor Mike Stratton, director of the Cancer Genome Project at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, said: "Discovering new cancer genes, new drug targets and new ways to predict whether patients will respond to certain therapies are accelerating, but a large challenge is to obtain the benefits of these advances for patients in the NHS.

"This initiative will form the basis for doing just that."