A new method using a Patient’s drug-resistant tumor cells to screen for effective Therapies

In collaboration with Cyril Benes, also at Massachusetts General, Engelman’s team developed a method using a patient’s drug-resistant tumor cells to screen for effective therapies. Starting with a tiny amount of tumor tissue from a biopsy, the scientists grew patient cells in a dish until they had enough to perform drug screening. They then tested those cells against 76 cancer drugs.
By combining the drug screening and traditional genetic analyses, the team successfully identified treatment combinations that killed cells in 45 of 55 drug-resistant tumor cell lines tested.
The team didn’t use the resulting drug combinations to alter or guide any patient’s treatment regimens, Engelman said. Before that can be done, the method needs to be evaluated in a randomized clinical trial to see whether the drug combinations that kill cancer cells in a dish are similarly effective in patients, he said.
In addition, the team spent months coaxing the patient cells to grow into large enough populations for the drug screening. To be useful to a cancer patient undergoing treatment, that process needs to take weeks, not months.
“What we’ve done is quite modest,” Engelman said. “What’s exciting now is whether we can take it to that next step -- use it to inform how we treat patients.”