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Research into pioneering methods of predicting the side effects of chemotherapy in individual cases of bowel cancer
10th January 2008
In Leicestershire 450 patients a year are diagnosed with Colorectal cancer (CRC; also known as bowel cancer) and of these, 110 receive chemotherapy for metastatic disease.
A number of drugs, including irinotecan have been shown to improve survival, however, some patients experience significant toxicity with this drug. Currently there is no way of predicting an individual patient’s tolerance to irinotecan.
Since quality of life is paramount importance when treating patients with incurable disease, a proportion of patients choose not to receive irinotecan because of this risk, and are therefore deprived of receiving potentially effective treatment.
If we could develop a test to prospectively identify patients at risk of significant toxicity it would enable clinicians to confidently recommend the drug to a particular patient
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