SAHMRI laboratory gut cancer group looks at ways to personalise the drugs suitable for an individual's treatment
Dr Susan Woods, who led the gut cancer group at SAHMRI and Adelaide University.
In an Australian first, researchers at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) in 2020 had adopted new ways to personalise attacks on bowel cancers failing to respond to early treatments.
In a multi-site study, samples were taken from 19 metastatic bowel cancer patients so tumour cells could be grown at the SAHMRI lab for direct testing. “All cancers are a bit different, even though we group them together under broad headings like bowel cancer,” said Dr Susan Woods, who led the gut cancer group at SAHMRI and Adelaide University. “Sadly, most of the patients included in our study will exhaust the treatment options available to them. By growing samples for each patient’s tumour, we can specifically test which drugs work best for their tumour.”
Researchers added their findings to a genomic sequencing to build a highly detailed profile of each cancer. Selected drugs that hadn’t necessarily been used on bowel cancer were tried. If any were found to be successful, they could be used them to treat that patient almost straight away.”
The work had “only scratched the surface of what might be possible”, Dr Woods said, and the group wanted to begin a Phase Two clinical trial using this innovative precision medicine approach. “It’s likely these techniques could prove to be relevant for other solid cancers too,” she said.
The project also involved the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Cancer Voice SA, and the US-based SEngine Precision Medicine and Columbia University Medical Centre.
