Robert A. Nagourney, M.D.
Cancer therapists have long sought mechanisms to match patients to available therapies. Current fashion revolves around DNA mutations, gene copy and rearrangements to select drugs. While every cancer patient may be as unique as their fingerprints, all of the fingerprints on file with the federal AFIS (automated fingerprint identification system) database don’t add up to a hill of genes (pun intended), if you can’t connect them to the criminal.
To continue the analogy, it doesn’t matter why the individual chose a life of crime, his upbringing, childhood traumas or personal tragedies. What matters is that you capture him in the flesh and incarcerate him (or her, to be politically correct).
The term we apply to the study of cancer, as a biological phenomenon is “systems biology.” This discipline strikes fear into the heart of molecular biologists, for it complicates their tidy algorithms and undermines the artificial linearity of their cancer pathways. We frequently allude to the catchphrase, genotype ≠ phenotype, yet it is the cancer phenotype that we must confront if we are to cure this disease.
Using a systems biology approach, we applied the ex-vivo analysis of programmed cell death (functional profiling) to the study of previously untreated patients with non-small cell lung cancer. Tissue aggregates isolated from their surgical specimens were studied in their native state against drugs and signal transduction inhibitors. This methodology captures all of the interacting “systems,” as they respond to cytotoxic agents and growth factor withdrawal. The trial was powered to achieve a two-fold improvement in response.
At interim analysis, we had more than accomplished our goal. The results speak for themselves.
First: a two-fold improvement in clinical response – from the national average of 30 percent we achieved 64.5 percent (p – 0.00015).
Second: The median time to progression was improved from 6.4 to 8.5 months.
Third: And most importantly the median overall survival was improved from an average of 10 – 12 months to 21.3 months, a near doubling.
These results, from a prospective clinical trial in which previously untreated lung cancer patients were provided assay directed therapy, reflects the first real time application of systems biology to chemotherapeutics. The closest comparison for improved clinical outcome with chemotherapeutic drugs chosen from among all active agents by a molecular platform in a prospective clinical trial is . . . Oh, that’s right there isn’t any.
http://www.rationaltherapeutics.com/...d-reports.aspx
Systems Biology Is The Future Of Medical Research
http://cancerfocus.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3473