Test Predicts Effective Brain Cancer Treatment

BOSTON (Reuters) - California researchers say they can now identify the 800 to 2,000 people in the United States who will respond to treatment against an aggressive form of brain cancer, a study released on Wednesday showed.

The tumor, glioblastoma, typically kills its victims in less than a year and only 10 percent to 20 percent of sufferers respond to drugs that block a key protein called EGFR in the cancer cells.

Paul Mischel of the University of California at Los Angeles and his colleagues reported in The New England Journal of Medicine that they have developed a test for brain tumor tissue that predicts which patients will be sensitive to the drugs.

Among 26 patients who received the drug therapy, the ones shown to be sensitive to the growth factor-attacking drugs lived five times longer, or 253 days, than those whose tumors did not appear to be sensitive.

"This will help prevent patients from having therapies that are much more toxic and less beneficial," Mischel said. "With the short survival times associated with glioblastoma, it is critical."