Briefs

July 24, 2007 -- Cancer patients don't have time to waste. Many go through several different treatments, however, to find one that is more effective against their particular type of tumor.

Thus, an algorithm that could help rapidly sort molecular information about a patient's particular tumor and could help match this information to the right drug treatment would be a breakthrough of enormous value.

Dan Theodorescu, M.D., Ph.D., a University of Virginia oncologist and cancer biologist, and Jae Lee, Ph.D., a computational biologist and bioinformatics statistician, have pioneered just such a system. This work involved collaboration with colleagues at the National Cancer Institute, GeneLogic Inc. and the University of Virginia Computer Sciences Department. They published their results the week of July 23 in the Early Edition of the Proceeedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found online.

Using a panel of 60 diverse, human cancer cell lines from the National Cancer Institute (NCI-60), the researchers devised and tested an algorithm designed to match the best potential treatment(s) for a particular tumor in a particular patient.

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