Efficacy of individualized therapy in leukemia and lymphoma patients
October 2021
Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
This study tested a novel personalized medicine approach, termed “single-cell functional precision medicine (scFPM)”. The response to drugs on healthy and malignant cells, isolated from freshly removed tissue from patients with advanced aggressive hematologic cancers was investigated with an in-depth analysis. Consequently, the method facilitates the identification of drugs that show cancer cell-specific efficacy, while plausibly exhibiting a reduction in side effects. The high precision of this platform is achieved with automated high-content microscopy and computerized image analysis, formerly called “pharmacoscopy”. The researchers examined 56 patients' tumor cells of real-time biopsies and directly tested the effects of more than 130 candidate compounds to determine which therapy would be effective in each patient. To test the individual benefit to patients, the response time to therapy was compared with that of their respective prior therapy. 54% of the patients had a significant, at least more than 30% prolonged time of progression-free survival under the scFPM-guided therapy. 21% of all patients even showed a long-term response. The study demonstrates that individual therapy tailoring is feasible and effective in breaking resistance to prior therapies.
Functional precision medicine provides clinical benefit in advanced aggressive hematological cancers and identifies exceptional responders
Philipp B. Staber
Added on: 02-23-2022
[1] https://cancerdiscovery.aacrjournals.org/content/early/2021/09/29/2159-8290.CD-21-0538[2] https://www.bionity.com/en/news/1173159/efficacy-of-individualized-therapy-in-leukemia-and-lymphoma-patients.html
