Gene test aids tumor treatment

By Emma Ross
The Associated Press

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Most read articles Most e-mailed articles

LONDON — A simple genetic test can identify which patients with deadly brain tumors will be helped by a treatment hailed as the first significant advance against the disease in decades, scientists said yesterday.

A study by Swiss doctors, presented yesterday at a conference in Geneva, found 46 percent of patients with the right genetic profile were alive after two years if they got the drug, temozolomide, and radiation therapy. The chance of survival among patients with the wrong genetic signature was only 14 percent, not much better than with radiation alone.

Experts say the test could avoid raising false hopes in those patients with the deadly tumors, known as glioblastomas, who would get no benefit, freeing doctors to try other approaches. The finding is another step in the quest for individual tailoring of cancer treatment, they say.

"The problem we've had with temozolomide is that if it's not working, then you're left to watch the disease progress," said Dr. Ralph Vance, national president of the American Cancer Society, who was not involved with the research.

"This is a wonderful thing if we could test the glioblastoma. Then we won't be guessing and wasting time for people in whom this won't work ... we could get them in another trial that would at least give them a chance," said Vance, a professor of medicine at the University of Mississippi.

Radiation and surgery have been the first-line treatments for glioblastomas, but even with them, the disease usually kills within a year or less.

Unlike most cancer, which kills by spreading through the body, glioblastomas grow quickly inside the head, destroying everything in their path. Around the world, 175,000 cases are diagnosed annually, killing 125,000 people.

Earlier this year, the Swiss scientists reported that giving temozolomide to patients early in treatment could prolong the lives of some. About 26 percent of the patients that got the drug were alive after two years.

In the experiment reported yesterday, the researchers, led by Dr. Monika Hegi, head of the tumor biology and genetics lab at University Hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland, examined the genetic makeup of 106 people given the drug in the earlier study.

They found the key to predicting which patients would benefit from the drug was a gene involved in DNA repair and its status in the patient's tumor. If the gene was switched off, the drug worked, but if the gene was active, the drug had little effect.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

E-mail this article

Print this article

Search archive

More nation & world headlines...