Researchers in B.C. have developed a method to help find personalized and unconventional treatments for young cancer patients.
It works by growing a patient’s tumour in chicken eggs and then analyzing the proteins.
“What we’ve done here is take a small piece of the child’s tumour and implanted it on embryonic chicken eggs, which provides that environment which feeds the tumour and allows it grow,” Dr. James Lim with the Childhood Cancer Research Program at BC Children’s Hospital told CTV News on Wednesday.
“And then we can actually drug it and understand the response to that treatment.”
That can allow doctors to use unconventional drugs.
“That means for patients that they now have an additional strategy to find a therapy if they ran out of standard of care options,” said Dr. Philipp Lange, a co-author of the study which looked into an unnamed patient suffering from rare form of childhood cancer that was not responding to conventional treatment.
The approach identified a drug already approved for use as an antidepressant.
“In this case, it’s a drug that already has safety data for children, and allowing us to apply that in a clinical fashion, without waiting for very time-consuming clinical trials,” explained Dr. Lim.
Beyond trying to treat patients with specific cancers, there’s also a hope this research can eventually lead to developing treatments that are easier on patients.
While existing treatments are effective in many cases, they can be hard on the body – even leading to secondary cancers later in life.
The research can also provide a boost to patients and their families in situations when they feel all options have been exhausted.
“If there’s no standard of therapy that’s working anymore, there’s research going on that might find another path forward. From what we’ve heard from patients, this additional hope is really beneficial to them,” noted Dr. Lange.
In this case, the drug slowed the tumour’s growth, but did not stop it altogether.
However, researchers hope this approach leads to more personalized treatments – and hopefully – better outcomes for patients.
