Simple Blood Test Could Speed up Cancer Drug Development
9 June 2011 - Cancer drug development could accelerate in the future thanks to a simple and quick blood test that can help reveal the effectiveness of a new treatment.
Clinical trials in cancer generally measure the success of a new drug based on whether it increases ‘overall survival’, however this means researchers and regulators need to wait a long time before they can conclude that a new drug is benefiting patients.
As part of a Phase III trial for the new prostate cancer drug abiraterone acetate, scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research and collaborators investigated whether the level of Circulating Tumour Cells (CTCs) in patients’ blood was linked to their subsequent survival.
CTCs are cancer cells that have broken away from a tumour and entered the blood stream. For men with initially high CTC levels, they found a fall in CTC levels after treatment (along with a fall in levels of lactate dehydrogenase or LDH) correlated to longer survival, while those whose CTCs and LDH did not fall had poor survival rates.
According to the data presented at the ASCO annual meeting, a significant change could be measured within four weeks of treatment. The CTC test is already being incorporated in other Phase III trials and it is hoped that ultimately the panel may be widely used to measure patients’ prognoses.
