[ad_1]
They followed 384 children with high-risk cancers over a two-year period.
Of these children, 256 received targeted treatments based on the recently developed DNA-targeted treatment known as precision-targeted therapy (PGT).
The treatment works by first doing genomic sequencing of the child’s tumor, then using those results to develop targeted cancer therapies that pick out the molecular drivers of the patient’s cancer.
More than a third of the children (36%) responded to the precisely targeted treatment.
Two years after starting treatment, just over a quarter (26 percent) of children who had precisely targeted treatment survived without cancer progression.
For children who received standard care, that figure was 12 percent, while for children who received targeted drugs that were not guided by genetic results, it was only 5.2 percent.
Children who received DNA treatment early in their disease progression did best.
The researchers say the results demonstrate the vital role that genetic sequencing can play in helping to improve cancer survival rates.
“Our comparison of PGT and UGT (untargeted treatment) found a significantly lower score for UGT, highlighting the critical role of molecular analysis in guiding therapeutic decisions,” they wrote in Natural medicine.
They hope their findings will increase patient and physician confidence in these new technologies, as uptake of the revolutionary technique has so far remained low, between 10 and 33 percent.
[ad_2]
