Comment on Study will sort cancer patients by mutations

CHICAGO — The National Cancer Institute announced Monday the launch of a nationwide research study that will sort patients into treatment groups based on genetic mutations in their tumors, rather than by cancer type. The precision medicine study seeks to take advantage of progress in the last decade at identifying molecular abnormalities in cancers to determine whether drugs are more effective when targeted at those changes, rather than at longstanding labels of cancer types. So, for example, a patient with a kidney tumor might be assigned to a group that is being treated with a drug traditionally used for another form of cancer – if DNA tests showed a likelihood that the drug might work on his tumor’s makeup.