Dublin hospital makes strides in creating personalised cancer tests

A cost-efficient test which could identify up to 50 different cancer mutations is being developed at St James’s Hospital in Dublin.

St James’s is part of an international consortium involved in biomarking testing for mutant genes such as Her2 involved in breast cancer, BRAF, involved in melanoma and ALK involved in lung cancer.

The Ion Torrent project uses just 10 nanograms of DNA to look at dozens of gene mutations at once. Consultant oncologist Prof Ken O’Byrne, who is leaving to take up a new post in Australia, said the test was between six months and a year away.

It will cost the same as the current tests used for identifying individual cancer mutation genes, which is about €200.

The initiative is part of a drive towards personalised medicine which is yielding very promising results in treating cancer – the best known being Herceptin, which is being used to treat breast cancer.

One of the drugs which treats a certain mutation of lung cancer has been licensed in Ireland. Crizotinib is being given to lung cancer patients in St James’s Hospital. The drug has shown promising results in a small subset of patients with lung cancer.

Prof O’Byrne said the results were much better than with conventional chemotherapy. The drug shrank the tumours by more than 50 per cent in at least half the patients who took the drug.

It controls the progression of lung cancer for four to five months and manages the symptoms better. “The survival difference is harder to prove, but we do know that it controls the cancer better.

“For the patients, that’s a summer, seeing a communion or confirmation, all those things that are important to people. The quality of life is much better in terms of emotional functioning,” he said.

Crizotinib has yet to be approved by the National Centre for Pharmoeconomics (NCPE) for funding.