NEW YORK TIMES: …Cancers often tend to be fueled by changes in genes, or mutations, that make cells grow and spread to other parts of the body. There are now an increasing number of drugs that block mutations in cancer genes and can halt a tumor’s growth.
While such an approach has worked in a few isolated cases, those cases cannot reveal whether the experiences of others with the same mutation would hold true.
Now, medical facilities like Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, where Mrs. Hurwitz is a patient, are starting coordinated efforts to get some answers. And this spring, a federally funded national program will start to screen tumors in thousands of patients to see which might be attacked by any of at least a dozen new drugs. Those whose tumors have mutations that can be attacked will be given the drugs… (more)
