Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
RESEARCHERS AT DUBLIN’S Trinity College have published a new study on the drug-resistance encountered by some ovarian cancer patients which they hope will help improve clinical treatment of the disease.
Around 4 per cent of all cancers diagnosed in women worldwide is ovarian, and around 204,000 new cases are diagnosed every year.
Although chemotherapy is the only treatment option, many ovarian cancer patients develop a resistance to chemotherapy.
Tailoring the chemotherapy drug used in breast cancer treatment according to the cancer subtype has improved outcomes for breast cancer patients. TCD researcher Dr Britta Stordal says that if ovarian cancer patients can be subdivided into different resistance categories, “we can start personalising the treatment of this disease”.
“The cost of patients receiving chemotherapy that they do not respond to is high, both for the patients and financially for the healthcare system,” she said. “By understanding how chemotherapy resistance develops in ovarian cancer, we can determine the best drug to prescribe to each patient.”
She said that tailoring the treatment on an individual bases of relapsed patients “can only improve cancer treatment in terms of increased response rates”.
The TCD study has been working with drug-resistant ovarian cancer cells developed in a Dutch lab. These cells have molecular markers of resistance and highlight the multiple mechanisms which can be found in such resistant cells.
TCD researchers say they will now work on samples of tumours from ovarian cancer patients to examine those markers.
Stordal says she hopes the study will find markets that can separate patients who respond and those who do not respond to the chemotherapy drugs used in first-line ovarian cancer treatment. Patients who have a reduced chance of responding to the treatment could then be offered alternative treatment.
The resistance research paper has been published in the PLoS One science publication.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
How about extending Breast and Bowel Screening Tests to over 70′s? That would be a real benefit and an end to age discrimination in those areas.
That’s nothing new. Most old age pensioners bring the partner any, I don’t feel anyone would stop
them, give it a rest, Bord failte talk
@Phillip Smyth: yes, but this measure extends it from spouse, to friend or loved one
@Phillip Smyth: I was stopped at Carlow Railway station from bringing my sister as a companion and she is even older than me.
@Kevin Kerr: this happening anyhow has been years it’s an epidemic lol.
@Geraldine Mahon: I would have kicked up a major fuss, Shame on them.
Address the huge cost of attending hospital appointments, and having to use and pay for the car parks.
The HSE have contracted the car park facilities out so that they don’t have to deal directly with the clients.
have your say