Breast Cancer Is 10 Diseases Says Landmark Study

[News]

Breast cancer is at least 10 different diseases, each with its own genetic signature and pattern of weak spots, according to a new landmark study that promises to revolutionize diagnosis and prognosis, and pave the way for individualized, tailored treatment...

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[gdpawel]

I like what Dr. Elaine Schattner had to say about this. The mainstay of treatment would be a cocktail of drugs, by mouth, like patients take for hepatitis C, tuberculosis or AIDS.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elaine...b_1472528.html

Cocktails have become standard treatment in many oncological protocols: concoctions of two or more powerful cytotoxic agents which supposedly will attack the tumor in different ways. The ability of various agents to kill tumor and/or microvascular cells (anti-angiogenesis) in the same tumor specimen is highly variable among the different agents. There are so many agents out there now, doctors have a confusing array of choices. They don't know how to mix them together in the right order.

A diagnosis of AIDS was a death sentence until the advent of drug cocktails in the 1990s, which helped patients suppress the disease indefinitely. Now researchers say a similar combination strategy may change the course of cancer.

The application of synergy analyses (drug cocktails) may represent one of the most important applications of the functional cytometric profiling platform, enabling the exploration of both anticipated and unanticipated favorable interactions. Equally important may be the capacity to study drug antagonism wherein two effective drugs counteract each others’ benefits. This phenomenon, characterized by the whole being less than the sum of the parts, represents a major pitfall for clinical trialists who simply combine drugs “because they can.”

These analyses are revolutionizing the way newer classes of drugs are applied and has the potential to accelerate drug development and clinical therapeutics. Good outcomes require good drugs, but better outcomes require good combinations. Intelligent combinations are a principle focus of the functional cytometric profiling platform. It strives to identify the best outcomes for patients (not populations of patients).

Arnold Glazier, M.D., former Oncology Fellow at Johns Hopkins, said in his book Cure: Scientific, Social and Organizational Requirements for the Specific Cure of Cancer," the consistent and specific cure or control of cancer will require multiple drugs administered in combination targeted to abnormal patterns of normal cellular machinery that effect or reflect malignant behavior. Finding the 'patterns' of malignant cells and developing a set of 5 to10 drugs in order to cure or control cancer."

http://cancerfocus.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3371

[Rich66]

Better than the "thousands" of variations some report. If a rotation of 5-10 drugs/drug combos could make it chronic, nice. But perhaps use of relatively abundant tissue samples from adjuvant surgery could both help the given patient as well as allow experimental trial of various drugs and agents as well.

[gdpawel]

They were looking for drugs to treat the inflammation seen in Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. They tested a compound called a PPAR-gamma modulator. It would never normally have been thought of as a cancer drug, or in fact a drug of any kind. They ran several tests and found the compound killed pretty much every epithelial tumor cell lines they have seen. Epithelial cells line organs such as the colon, and also make up skin.

They reported in the journal International Cancer Research that it killed colon tumors in mice without making the mice sick. The compound worked in much the same way as the taxane drugs, including Taxol, which were originally derived from Pacific yew trees. It targets part of the cell cytoskeleton called tubulin. Tubulin is used to build microtubules, which in turn make up the cell's structure.

Destroying it kills the cell, but cancer cells eventually evolve mechanisms to pump out the drugs that do this, a problem called resistance. Resistance to anti-tubulin therapies, like Taxol, is a huge problem in many cancers. They see this as another way to get to the tubulin. The PPAR-gamma compound does this in a different way from the taxanes, which might mean it could overcome the resistance that tumor cells often develop to chemotherapy.

Most of the drugs like Taxol affect the ability of tubulin to form into microtubules. This doesn't do that -- it causes the tubulin itself to disappear. They do not know why. They planned to do more safety tests in mice. As the compound is already patented, the team will probably have to design something slightly different to be able to patent it as a new drug.

Cabozantinib Shows Promise against Bone Metastases

http://cancerfocus.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3440