Matching targeted therapies to gene mutations improves survival
1 minute read | Published June 15, 2018
Medically Reviewed | Last reviewed by an MD Anderson Cancer Center medical professional on June 15, 2018
Matching targeted therapies to tumor-specific gene mutations across tumor types improved survival in patients with advanced cancer, compared to those receiving non-matched, standard-of-care treatment, MD Anderson trial data revealed.
Long-term data from the center’s IMPACT trial, which compares treatments based on molecular profiling to standard-of-care treatments, showed the three-year, overall survival rate was 15 percent in those who underwent molecular profiling and 7 percent in those who did not. The 10-year survival rate was 6 percent in the molecular profiling group and 1 percent in the non-molecular profiling group.
This IMPACT study, which opened in 2007, is the first and largest precision medicine trial to look at survival.
“When IMPACT first opened, we tested for no more than one to two genes,” says Apostolia Tsimberidou, M.D., Ph.D., professor of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics. “Now patients are being tested for hundreds of actionable genes.”
In the future, Tsimberidou says molecular profiling tumors will ideally become the standard of care at the time of diagnosis, especially for patients with hard-to-treat cancers.
A follow-up study, IMPACT2, is underway.
Read more about the IMPACT trial in the MD Anderson Newsroom.
