Personalized treatment linked to better Phase I outcomes

Researchers at the University of California San Diego and colleagues found that use of personalized cancer therapies improved outcomes compared to non-personalized or cytotoxic treatments in Phase I trials. The authors said the results should encourage the use of personalized medicine in early clinical development.

In an abstract released ahead of next month's American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting, the researchers' meta-analysis of 346 Phase I trials showed that study arms using biomarkers to select patients had significantly higher response rates compared to study arms that did not (30.6% vs. 4.9%; p<0.0001), as well as higher median progression free survival (PFS) (5.7 months vs. 2.95 months; p=0.0002). ...