Saturday, October 17, 2009

Canadian Researchers Sequence a Patient's Metastatic Breast Cancer Genome

One of the cancer bloggers I read regularly posted this link:

Canadian researchers make breast cancer breakthrough

I find this article really interesting because I think it means that all the different mutations that have occurred in a patient's cancer, even at the beginning, means that different cancer cells will respond to treatments in different ways. The one patient they discussed in the article had five different mutations at the beginning and, by the end, she had 32 different mutations.

So, perhaps in the beginning, my cancer responded to Xeloda and Tykerb (but not completely - it knocked out a lot of them but not all of them), but maybe now it'll respond to Tykerb plus Femara (but maybe not all of them - that'll have to rely on a different regimen).

Anyway, thanks, Chris, for posting this link! Hopefully, it means some kind of breakthrough!

1 comment:

Carver said...

This is the kind of research I like to see. With melanoma there is a huge discrepancy between who responds to what and that's the area I hope they'll research for melanoma too. Great to see they are doing it for BCC.

I hope that you will be completely well soon! I also saw Eddie was starting to have some symptoms. I hope he doesn't get sick.