5 ms·

A Faster Way to Try Many Drugs on Many Cancers

55 points by pmcpinto 12y ago

forloop 12y ago
Paywall.
carbocation 12y ago
This article describes "basket studies" in which patients with different rumors that share underlying mutations will receive the same targeted therapies. The name is inelegant but the logic of targeting shared mutations in a basket of genetic disease is rational. The hard part will be teasing out signal due to drug effect from signal due purely to enrollment in a trial, which as stated in the article will require large-magnitude effects, and probably heavy comparison to outside data. One could also imagine a study protocol in which a single patient receives many drugs targeted at various mutations, and the results could make sense only at a large scale after decomposing the signal from many recipients of the cocktail. This, however, is not what is described in the article.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
bradddd 12y ago
The biggest breakthrough here is the FDA's acceptance of basket studies-- claiming that they would approve drugs on it alone. That's a big win for patients, who based on current practices, would have found themselves in the control group.
javiramos 12y ago
This startup (http://www.flatiron.com/ http://www.flatiron.com/) is attempting to create a database of cancer etc. At first I thought that the idea was a bit too ahead of its time but now its value is becoming clearer. Data will be a very powerful part of defeating cancer.
- christopheraden 12y ago
  It seems like they are doing more than that, though. Cancer data has been collected (by law) and stored for decades. I'd be curious to see if FlatIron was using historical records from Cancer Registries (California's Cancer Registry has millions of cases, for example), or just "EMR and billing systems".
  - IndianAstronaut 12y ago
    >Cancer data has been collected (by law) and stored for decades Have tissue samples been stored as well over the decades? I am not sure about DNA preservation over the years, but it might at least give us some ideas of cancer, especially inheritance issues surrounding cancer.
    - christopheraden 12y ago
      You are correct about the tissue samples. CCR mostly collects treatment, demographic, and disease information. I didn't get the feeling from their website that FlatIron was collecting tissue samples, either, though.

55 points by pmcpinto 12y ago

Paywall.

This article describes "basket studies" in which patients with different rumors that share underlying mutations will receive the same targeted therapies. The name is inelegant but the logic of targeting shared mutations in a basket of genetic disease is rational. The hard part will be teasing out signal due to drug effect from signal due purely to enrollment in a trial, which as stated in the article will require large-magnitude effects, and probably heavy comparison to outside data. One could also imagine a study protocol in which a single patient receives many drugs targeted at various mutations, and the results could make sense only at a large scale after decomposing the signal from many recipients of the cocktail. This, however, is not what is described in the article.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

bradddd 12y ago

The biggest breakthrough here is the FDA's acceptance of basket studies-- claiming that they would approve drugs on it alone. That's a big win for patients, who based on current practices, would have found themselves in the control group.

javiramos 12y ago

This startup (http://www.flatiron.com/ http://www.flatiron.com/) is attempting to create a database of cancer etc. At first I thought that the idea was a bit too ahead of its time but now its value is becoming clearer. Data will be a very powerful part of defeating cancer.

christopheraden 12y ago
It seems like they are doing more than that, though. Cancer data has been collected (by law) and stored for decades. I'd be curious to see if FlatIron was using historical records from Cancer Registries (California's Cancer Registry has millions of cases, for example), or just "EMR and billing systems".
- IndianAstronaut 12y ago
  >Cancer data has been collected (by law) and stored for decades Have tissue samples been stored as well over the decades? I am not sure about DNA preservation over the years, but it might at least give us some ideas of cancer, especially inheritance issues surrounding cancer.
  - christopheraden 12y ago
    You are correct about the tissue samples. CCR mostly collects treatment, demographic, and disease information. I didn't get the feeling from their website that FlatIron was collecting tissue samples, either, though.