Cancer Cure Now

Aside from detecting a genetic propensity to develop cancer, a variety of tests are available to determine whether a patient will benefit from specific therapies. Scientists in Taiwan have developed a simple, five-gene test which can tell whether lung cancer patients will benefit from chemotherapy. Some early-stage lung tumors have such a low risk of recurrence that adjuvant chemotherapy may not indicated after surgical resection.1 Similar tests are available for breast cancer2,3 and lymphoma.4 These tests can help patients avoid unnecessary chemotherapy, or receive chemotherapy more specifically targeted at their type of cancer.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (1). Hsuan-Yu Chen, et al. A Five-Gene Signature and Clinical Outcome in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer, N Engl J Med. 2007;356:11-20, 76-78.

(2). Buyse M, Loi S, Veer LV, Viale G, Delorenzi M, Glas AM, et al. Validation and clinical utility of a 70-gene prognostic signature for women with node-negative breast cancer. J Natl Cancer Inst 2006;98:1183-1192.

(3). Paik S, Shak S, Wolmark N, et al. A multigene assay to predict recurrence of node-negative, estrogen-receptor-positive breast cancer in tamoxifen-treated patients. New England Journal of Medicine, 351(27). December 30, 2004 (4)Sean P. Bohen,Olga G. Troyanskaya, Orly Alter, Roger Warnke, David Botstein, Patrick O. Brown, and Ronald Levy Variation in gene expression patterns in follicular lymphoma and the response to rituximab PNAS | February 18, 2003 | vol. 100 | no. 4 | 1926-1930