Exciting new test!

The Breakthrough Scientists at the Research Centre in London have developed a new test to indicate whether the most commonly-used chemotherapy drug will benefit a breast cancer patient within 24 hours of taking it.

Dr Nick Turner said “This test may reduce the time taken to discover if a breast cancer patient is not going to have a good response to a chemotherapy from three months to just 24 hours. It would make a big difference to patients, who could be moved onto other treatment options sooner and spared unnecessary side effects”.

 Currently, patients have to take a full 12-week course of chemotherapy before doctors know how well they have responded, which is typically a combination of two or three chemotherapy drugs. One of these would usually be anthracycline. While the drug works for many patients, some patients do not respond. If a woman does not respond to anthracycline based chemotherapy they could be taken off it and treated with other chemotherapy drugs, or potentially switched to hormone therapies, such as tamoxifen.Professor Alan Ashworth, Director of the Research Centre, said: “We want to see all breast cancer patients get the right treatment at the earliest possible stage. This test is a step towards that aim and we now want to develop it so that it can be used routinely in the clinic“.

For more information visit: http://breakthrough.org.uk/media_centre/news_views/chemotherapy_test.html