A guiding light for tumor treatment

In the past, whenever a patient asked, “Which chemotherapy regimen is more effective for my disease?” oncologists always found it difficult to answer. Because clinicians could only rely on the remission rate of tumor and survival rate of patients to obtain the efficacy information, they could not judge the sensitivity of patients to chemotherapy drugs and their efficacy for a patient who has not been treated. However, with the advent of gene microarray technology, oncologists have found a way to obtain information about the sensitivity of a patient’s disease to a drug before treatment begins. Doctors can also speculate on the biology of a patient’s tumor and develop the most appropriate individualized treatment plan to maximize the survival rate of tumor patients. The illuminating light of tumor treatment is thus rising. Current research has concluded that the occurrence and development of tumor is a complex process with multi-stage and multi-gene involvement. And gene microarray technology can scan thousands of genes in tumor samples to obtain messenger RNA (ribonucleic acid) information and make it available for experimental analysis. The results obtained by researchers through this method of genetic material analysis are up to 80% accurate. In this way, researchers can use it to predict not only whether a particular drug is effective in blocking a tumor, but also to broadly determine the therapeutic effect of a specific combination of several drugs. At present, although the technology of gene chip testing is not yet fully mature and has not reached the level of global popularity. However, its achievements in certain tumor treatment applications are already very exciting. For example, through the 21-gene test for breast cancer, doctors can more accurately determine the benefit of chemotherapy for patients, and can formulate individualized treatment plans accordingly. Although gene microarray technology has shown a bright application prospect, it has not been popularized worldwide for the time being due to the high cost of gene microarray testing and the fact that the analysis method of gene microarray data is still in the exploratory stage, and no better method than all other data classification methods has been found yet. At present, the most applied is to help doctors provide therapeutic basis in certain tumor treatment by examining some genes. Thanks to the efforts of doctors in our laboratory center, we are now able to carry out a number of genetic tests, such as platinum drug sensitivity, K-ras gene test, EGFR gene test, etc., and the price is within the patients’ affordability, and many patients have already benefited from them. In the future, our laboratory center will continue to work hard to develop new genetic testing technologies to make the guiding light of tumor patient treatment shine brighter.