It was announced on Wednesday that a new method for finding participants in clinical traits of lung cancer drugs have been developed. Australian Researchers from Melbourne’s Walter and Eliza Hall Institute were optimistic that the new recruitment process will boost the success rate of the drugs being trailed as treatments for lung squamous cell carcinoma, the second most common type of lung cancer. The scientists, by mimicking the complexity of human tumours, could identify a biomarker which could serve as an indication as to which patient would respond better to certain drugs, reported Xinhua news agency.
The patients with the biomarker were more likely to respond positively to fibroglast growth factor receptor (FGFR) drugs, said Marie-Liesse Asselin-Labat, the lead author of the study, “We found that high levels of the anti-cancer drug’s target, FGFR1, in a patient’s tumour ribonucleic acid (RNA) were a better predictor of their potential response to the drug than the current tests that are used.”
Ben Solomon, a medical oncologist from the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, said that the finding meant future clinical trials could be designed to succeed. “Fewer than 10 per cent of new cancer drugs make it past phase 1 clinical trials. In many cases this isn’t because of the drug itself, but because of a limitation in clinical trial design. Understanding which patients are most likely to respond to certain drugs in clinical trials is crucial both for patients to receive the best treatment, and for new drugs to make it to the clinic. Hopefully these data will help to improve trial outcomes by recruiting patients who otherwise might not have been matched to the right trial for them,” Solomon said.
