In hospital interviews, brain tumor patients were asked to answer a series of questions based on memory about their mobile phone use habits prior to being diagnosed.
Dirks and Clarke, working separately, noticed that tumor samples from patients contained a mix of mature- and immature-looking cells when viewed under a microscope.
On the FDA's Fast Track and in phase III testing is the company's BAY 43-9006, a small molecule RAF kinase and VEGF inhibitor that inhibits tumor growth for patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (advanced kidney cancer).
For instance, why did patients whose tumor growth was slowed not live longer?
In the study, led by Marco Gerlinger and Charles Swanton at the London Research Institute, researchers obtained tumor tissue from four patients with kidney cancer.
Combined, the two research teams tested tumor samples from 14 patients who had responded to Iressa and another 11 patients who did not respond to the drug.
The trial tested a new chemo combination aimed at mopping up remaining tumor cells by giving patients the two drugs in wide use and adding a third, Pharmacia's Camptosar.
In another study of RAD in breast cancer, three out of of 22 patients had big tumor shrinkage, while the disease stabilized in another 13 for prolonged periods.
Working independently, Meyerson's team at Dana-Farber and a group of researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital led by cancer geneticist Daniel Haber analyzed tumor samples from lung cancer patients who'd taken Iressa, and searched for mutations in the EGFR gene.
Its most promising cancer drug in testing helps just 5% of lung cancer patients with a particular tumor mutation.
While many drugs that attack single genes have hit the market recently, they often have been used indiscriminately in all patients with a single tumor type.
In a 54-patient trial in Japan, Afinitor temporarily halted tumor growth in 55% of patients, according to results presented at a meeting of cancer specialists in January.
Instead of aiming at broad tumor categories, such as all patients with lung cancer or colon cancer, the new medicines target specific subsets of patients whose tumors have particular gene mutations.
Someday he envisions cancer centers storing giant banks of premade T cells to match the patients' bone marrow and tumor types.
Among 1, 217 patients who consented to have their tumor genes sampled, 437 usable tumor samples could be procured.
At the same meeting Bayer and Onyx said their drug caused at least some tumor shrinkage in 42% of 89 kidney patients tested.
The company has collected tumor samples from about 40% of the patients in its trials and is now analyzing them to search for a set of genetic parameters that predict which patients best respond to the drug.
But most of the bleeding occurred in patients who had a particular type of tumor, called a squamous cell tumor.
Abraxane, a cancer chemotherapy made by Celgene, slowed tumor growth and cut the risk of death in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer, according to results that will be presented at a conference on gastrointestinal tumors being held by the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
FORBES: Celgene's Abraxane Extends Life By 1.8 Months In Advanced Pancreatic Cancer
At least one of Sampson's patients has made it six years without his tumor coming back.
Tumor size shrank by 50% in 19% of patients who failed to respond to traditional chemotherapy.
In the patients who responded to the treatment, the tumor shrinkage persisted for at least six months.
FORBES: Seattle Genetics Scores Win For Smart-Bomb Cancer Drugs
Some patients might be sequenced multiple times as a tumor spreads and mutates.
Fleming says gastrointestinal hormones, insulin levels, and the physiology of lymphatic flow in obese patients may contribute to the spread of the tumor cells.
This second tumor shrinkage finding could be important for the minority of patients whose metastases are only slightly too big to attempt a curative surgery.
In another trial reported today in the New England Journal of Medicine, doctors reported that 57% of 82 lung cancer patients with the ALK gene alteration experienced dramatic tumor shrinkage with the Pfizer drug.
FORBES: Pfizer Drug Powers Cancer Treatment Into The DNA Age
New research needs to be done to better define which patients benefit, said Rakesh Jain, a brain tumor expert at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
In June oncologist Robert Motzer of New York's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center reported that SU11248 dramatically shrank tumors in 33% of 63 kidney cancer patients tested (including Judy Norris) and halted tumor growth in another 37%.
More than a decade after the tumor was discovered, 5.8 percent of the men who received surgery had died from prostate cancer or its treatment, compared to 8.4 percent of patients where doctors just kept an eye on the tumor.
It has high hopes for its new kidney cancer drug Afinitor, which helps patients whose disease is resistant to Pfizer's kidney tumor drug Sutent.
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