EU-funded project seeks to develop personalized medicine for cancer treatment

A European Union (EU)-funded project is developing new technologies to help doctors provide individual cancer treatments that target some of the most complicated conditions, said a European Commission press release on Tuesday.

The MERIT project, which uses new immunotherapy treatments, has so far involved conducting clinical trials on eight melanoma patients.

Targeted cancer therapies, according to the press release, are potentially more effective in treating cancers and less harmful to normal cells, as opposed to general treatments for many cancer patients which are rather ineffective and limited to chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

Researchers are developing new technologies to exploit unique targets in individual patients so as to provide individualized targeted treatments for potentially all patients with cancer, like triple-negative breast cancer.

"At present, the medicine works by fitting the patient's treatment to existing drugs," explained project coordinator Ugur Sahin, chief executive of BioNTech, Germany, "What we want to do is develop the treatment for each individual patient. This type of truly personalized treatment is currently missing in medicine."

Cancer expresses many tumor-specific antigens -- substances that provoke an immune response -- along with individual mutations. The problem is that every patient has a different pattern of antigens and mutations, which means there is no common denominator for conventional drug development.

Through the use of cutting-edge "next-generation sequencing" technology to identify these mutations, MERIT is developing a process capable of producing therapeutic vaccines from individual samples.

"Every cancer patient has mutations," said Sahin, "We know from our own research that these individual mutations can be targeted by immunotherapy. The challenge is that, as these mutations are unique, you have to prepare a tailored drug vial for each patient. This opens up the revolutionary idea of establishing a universally applicable platform for preparing medicine for individual patients."

The next step would be clinical trials with triple negative breast cancer patients and the development of commercial applications. Cost is a significant factor in the viability of any medical treatment, but is not something that Sahin saw as insurmountable.

"We have the chance to reduce the cost of treatment through automation," he explained, "This, after all, is a process. You start with a patient's tumor sample and end up with a vial. In between, the process can be customized, and so far we've managed to automate 50 percent of the work."

At the end of MERIT, which was scheduled for completion in May 2016, Sahin expected to be able to show the feasibility and safety of this new approach to medicine, and most importantly, see that patients are responding to new treatments. Endit