First "Personalized" Cancer Treatment Human Trial Started In UK
A Phase I trial assessing not only a new drug but also the first human trial of a new personalized cancer treatment has started this week at the Oxford University in the UK. Researchers say that the test has the potential to take on a broad range of late-stage cancers.
Lead researcher Professor Nick La Thangue of Oxford University's Department of Oncology said “When patients' cancers do not respond to a treatment, this can cost tens of thousands of pounds and cause patients to suffer side effects for nothing. Personalized medicine promises to prevent this by predicting how well a patient will respond to a drug before administering it and this is exactly what this trial will do. This is really the shape of things to come, and avoids the problem of testing drugs on patients who have little chance of benefiting from the treatment.”
The trial will involve 30 to 40 cancer patients who will be given increasing doses of the new drug, called CXD101, to identify the most effective dose. The second group of patients will be tested for HR23B protein and treated with the best dose identified. Mark Middleton, professor of experimental cancer medicine at Oxford University's Department of Oncology, said “This trial marks a lot of firsts– the first time the hospital has sponsored a trial of a new agent, the first time we will trial a predictive test along with a new drug, the first time CXD101 will be taken by patients, and even the development of the trial is new.”
CXD101 is a next- generation histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor which belongs to a class of drugs that destroys cancer cells by blocking HDAC enzymes’ vital functions. “HDAC inhibitors have had limited success in the past, but CXD101 works in a completely new way and has great potential to treat many different cancers. Our previous research suggests that high levels of the HR23B protein make tumors more vulnerable to HDAC inhibitors, so we will now be putting this into practice to identify the patients who are most likely to benefit from CXD101. Any cancer could be high in HR23B, from breast cancers to blood cancers, so we are screening a broad range of patients to identify anyone who might benefit,” La Thangue said.
The new drug and its associated test were first developed at Oxford University. The ongoing clinical trial is being carried out by Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust.