BALTIMORE, Oct. 12 (UPI) -- U.S. medical scientists say they've found a way to determine the best drug treatments to offer individual pancreatic cancer patients.
By grafting slices of patient tumors into mice, Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center specialists have figured out how to accurately "test drive" chemotherapy drugs.
Although "xenografting" with either cells or fresh tissue is used widely to test cancer therapies, the Hopkins design is personalized to each patient who has relapsed after an initial course of chemotherapy.
"Eventually our approach offers a promising way to individualize therapy earlier in treatment instead of first giving everyone the standard drug gemcitabine, which has a success rate of less than 10 percent," said Dr. Antonio Jimeno.
Results of preliminary tests of the Hopkins method in 14 patient samples taken after surgery show each xenografts' genetic profile remained stable through three and four generations of mice. The scientists also found they could build xenografts in 80 percent of their pancreatic patients -- a success rate higher than efforts with colon cancer patients, for which rates are typically about 50 percent.
The research appeared in a recent issue of the journal Clinical Cancer Research.
