A new way to test cancer drugs started Monday in hundreds of hospitals around the United States as doctors sort through multiple experimental drugs and match patients to the one most likely to succeed based on each person's unique tumor gene profile, according to The Associated Press.
The study, called Lung-MAP, is for advanced cases of a common, hard-to-treat form of lung cancer called squamous cell, with plans for similar studies for breast and colon cancer in the works, the AP reported.
It's a first-of-a-kind experiment that brings together five drug companies, the government, private foundations and advocacy groups, the AP reported. Its goal is to speed new treatments to market and give seriously ill patients more chances to find something that will help.
Everyone in the study will be screened for mutations in more than 200 cancer-related genes, rather than a single mutation as in conventional studies, the AP reported.
Then, they will be assigned to one of five groups based on what these tumor biomarkers show, according to the AP. Each group will test a particular experimental medicine and drugs can be added or subtracted from the study as it goes on.
Instead of being tested for individual genes and trying to qualify for separate clinical trials testing single drugs, patients can enroll in this umbrella study, get full gene testing and have access to many options at once, according to the AP.
"For patients, it gives them their best chance for treatment of a deadly disease," because everyone gets some type of therapy, said Ellen Sigal, chairwoman and founder of Friends of Cancer Research, a Washington-based research and advocacy group that helped plan and launch the study, the AP reported. "There's something for everyone, and we'll get answers faster" on whether experimental drugs work, she said.
Cancer medicines increasingly target specific gene mutations that are carried by smaller groups of patients, but researchers sometimes have to screen hundreds of patients to find a few with the right mutation, making drug development inefficient, expensive and slow, according to the AP.
