The effectiveness of cancer treatment: testing on mice
Mouse avatars will help you choose an individual therapy against cancer
For all the massiveness of the attack of scientists and the medical community on cancer, one of the main problems remains the personalization of treatment. Often, the developed methods cannot take into account the individual characteristics of the disease, and therefore, the selection of effective therapy takes a lot of precious time and causes additional damage to the patient's health in case of an error.
Therefore, there is now more and more talk about using laboratory mice as "avatars" of cancer. Rodents are transplanted under the skin of a fragment of a tumor of a particular patient and then various options of chemotherapy are tested on animals.
Over the past few years, hundreds of cancer patients have already used the help of their mouse "avatars" on their own initiative and for their own money, since traditional insurance does not cover such costs. This service is provided by private laboratories. One supplier of rodents for this kind of experiments is Champions Oncology, which is based in Hackensack (New Jersey, USA) and has offices in London, Tel Aviv and Singapore.
One example of the application of TumorGraft technology: the most suitable drug
for the treatment of pancreatic cancer in this case, mitomycin With,
which is rarely used to treat such tumors
(graph from the website championsoncology.com – VM).
The cost of the study includes paying $1,500 for taking a tumor sample and transplanting it to a group of mice, as well as $2,500 for testing each drug. Basically, patients are limited to checking the effectiveness of three to five chemotherapies, and the total amount of payment ranges from 10-12 thousand US dollars.
At the moment, the use of mice for individual testing is experimental in nature and there are not many complete scientific papers in this area.
There is no direct evidence that this method is better than classical medical principles or genetic tests. But for patients who have already used it, it is much easier psychologically, because they see that another living being has been helped by something that can help them. A particularly strong positive effect on patients is that they can see the likelihood of certain side effects of chemotherapy and avoid some of them.
In September 2014, Dr. Andrew Gaya from a private cancer clinic in London presented his results.
A study of the effectiveness of the method for 70 patients (for whom treatment by traditional methods has already been selected) showed that in most cases, therapy that did not work on mice was not effective for patients either.
There are also examples of real help from mouse "avatars" to specific patients. So, Yaron Panov, a 59-year-old man from Toronto, was diagnosed with liposarcoma four years ago. It was not possible to choose a specific therapy, and the patient was informed that he would live only six months.
Yaron decided not to put up with the situation, but turned to a private laboratory to study his disease on mice. The drug against colon cancer, which had not been considered by doctors before, turned out to be effective.
Of course, the mouse model has its drawbacks, which, by the way, have already proven methods of selecting anti-cancer therapy.
Firstly, tumor transplants are located under the skin of rodents to save time, and not in the organs and tissues of the natural localization of the disease.
Secondly, the immune system of the mice used is suppressed so that they can normally tolerate the presence of a human tumor. Therefore, this method is not suitable for the selection of immune therapy, since the reaction of the human immune system to it will remain unknown.
Another important limitation remains the duration of the study. Unfortunately, some patients need treatment within a week, and results on mice can be obtained only after a few months.
Therefore, this method of selecting therapy is more recommended for patients whose cancer has spread widely, or for those who have undergone primary treatment, and now it is necessary to find out which remedy will be most effective in further therapy.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru17.12.2014