A new trend in chemotherapy

A  new  trend  in  chemotherapy    

By  Angeliki  Pournara    

Nowadays  millions  of  people  get  diagnosed  with  cancer  and  most  of  them  have   to   go   through   chemotherapy   in   order   to   manage   a   successful   treatment.   Even   though  chemotherapy  is  one  of  the  leading  means  to  treat  cancer,  it  is  also  one  of   the   hardest,   as   the   patient   may   have   to   go   through   several   chemotherapeutic   schemes   ending   in   lots   of   suffering   and   a   wide   range   of   side   effects.   Since   excluding   chemotherapy   from   the   fight   against   cancer   is   not   possible   at   the   moment,   finding   a   way   to   make   it   less   painful   and   more   efficient   is   of   high   importance.    

A   new   automated   in   vitro   viability   assay   was   developed   in   order   to   assist   chemotherapeutic  treatment  of  patients  diagnosed  with  acute  myeloid  leukemia   (AML).  According  to  this,  a  wide  range  of  chemotherapeutic  drugs  that  are  used   nowadays   to   treat   AML,   can   be   screened   for   their   effectiveness   against   tumor   cells   deriving   from   each   patient.   The   tumor   cells   can   be   easily   isolated   from   samples   of   bone   marrow   or   peripheral   blood   coming   from   the   patient.   A   new   culture   medium   has   been   developed   to   assist   in   the   assimilation   of   the   environmental   conditions   inside   the   human   body   and   thus   leading   to   more   reliable  results.  A  new  highly  automated  microscope  has  also  been  developed  in   order  to  screen  the  effect  of  the  different  drugs  in  a  short  time.  The  assay  takes  in   total   3   days   to   complete   and   the   results   can   be   directly   sent   to   the   clinicians   helping  in  the  design  of  the  possibly  most  effective  chemotherapeutic  scheme  for   each  patient.  

This  new  assay  seems  to  be  very  promising.  It  is  fast,  easy  to  perform,  cheap  and  

can  give  accurate  results.  What  is  more  important  though,  is  that  it  can  actually  

assist  in  the  design  of  the  right  chemotherapeutic  scheme  for  each  patient,  taking  

into  account  the  individualized  traits  of  the  patient’s  tumor  cells.  The  drugs  that  

are  proved  to  be  more  effective  can  be  used  as  part  of  the  treatment,  avoiding  

thus  the  use  of  drugs  that  would  have  no  effect  at  all.  This  new  assay  promises  a  

more   effective   and   patient-­‐friendly   chemotherapy   and   is   expected   to   be   a   very  

important  step  towards  individualized  therapy  of  cancer.