Labour MSP Dr Richard Simpson said early diagnosis could lead to more targeted therapy.
She sees targeted therapy as the best way of starting to destroy tumors with fewer side effects.
If your cancer is HER2 positive, you may also be given a targeted therapy to attack the protein that's overproduced in these cancers.
The work is significant because it goes a long way towards proving that the concept of gene-targeted therapy can work in major common tumors.
For years biologists have figured the aging process is so complex it must involve thousands of genes, too many to offer an effective targeted therapy.
Options for systemic therapy include hormone therapy, chemotherapy or targeted therapy.
The prototype for targeted therapy is Roche's breast cancer drug Herceptin.
"To prove that a targeted therapy even worked was incredible a few years ago, " says Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society.
The studies excluded patients who had received prior B-cell targeted therapy or intravenous cyclophosphamide, and those who had active lupus involving the kidneys or central nervous system.
FORBES: Human Genome Sciences' Benlysta Approved To Treat Lupus
And no drug company has yet perfected a standardized test to determine which particular genetic flaws lie behind an individual patient's cancer, a key prerequisite to targeted therapy.
Given the billions of cancer cells in a patient, some cells will likely evolve that lack the targeted genetic alterations or that are resistant to the targeted therapy.
Targeted therapy: Targeted therapy looks at whether the cancer cells respond to a group of drugs that block the growth and spread of cancer by interfering with the biology of the cancer cells.
The first clear hint of targeted therapy's potential came in late 2003, when researchers at the German firm Boehringer Ingelheim reported that its hepatitis C protease inhibitor lowered the quantity of virus particles by roughly 99.9% in eight patients in two days of treatment, beating what interferon can accomplish in that time period.
Dr. PHILOMENA McANDREW (Oncologist): Part of the reason is that we don't have specific targeted therapy that we can use in addition to the chemotherapy, the general chemotherapy that will act to further reduce the risk of spread overtime as well as reduce the risk of a new breast cancer in the other breast.
So far Innogene has produced TherCIM, a monoclonal antibody for targeted cancer therapy that is already marketed in Southeast Asia.
FORBES: Indonesia's Kalbe Farma Expands From Health Care To Juice Drinks and Beyond
"If this targeted cancer therapy approach works in GIST and CML, it will work in each and every tumor, " predicted Druker.
Novartis' Gleevec, the first targeted cancer therapy, was incredibly effective.
That targeted cancer therapy, which helped most patients who took it for a rare leukemia, made it through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in a lightning-fast three months.
Novartis ' (nyse: NVS - news - people ) Gleevec, the first targeted cancer therapy, was approved after mid-stage trials in which it helped patients with chronic myelogenous leukemia.
It also illustrates how even as some "targeted" approaches to cancer therapy show promise, researchers are still facing dead ends.
Our results suggest that elderly women with AF may need to be targeted for more effective stroke prevention therapy.
Insert Therapeutics and Intradigm are also working on targeted treatments, but both companies are also exploring the use of a Nobel Prize-winning therapy based on RNA interference (RNAi).
应用推荐