With survival rate diminishing dramatically each year, inclusion of novel therapies for treating lung cancer seem to be vital. Experts now claim that patients with lung cancer can be provided with targeting, or personalized treatment through molecular analysis of a tumor along with the crizotinib drug to prevent genetic expression. Targeted cancer therapies are known to be more selective for cancer cells, harm fewer normal cells, decline side effects and enhance the quality of life.
Throughout the study it appeared that crizotinib slows, stops or reverses growth in advanced non-small cell lung cancer tumors. This drug apparently targets a genetic mutation that leads to uncontrolled tumor growth. All the study subjects were probably tested positive for a mutation in the anaplastic lymphoma kinase gene. On completion of the investigations, 57 percent patients reported absence or shrinkage of tumors. And other 33 percent lung cancer patients supposedly had their tumors ceased. Presumably, the response rate to present day standard care for advanced non-small cell lung cancer is around 15 percent. The current study triggered on 82 patients ascertained that the targeted genetic mutation was especially prevalent in those who never smoked.
While all the volunteers aged from 25 to 78, 76 percent of them were nonsmokers. Dr. Ignatius Ou, and colleagues enlightened the most patients are generally subjected to chemotherapy combined with targeted therapy in those eligible. With the inclusion advance of personalized medicine the specific genetic change occurring in the lung cancer may be appropriately discovered. Understanding these alterations can supposedly aid physicians to treat patients with specific inhibitors for improving survival rates and quality of life.
The study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.