Researchers are increasingly studying “super responders,” those patients that respond well to a drug that does not work in most people. Academic centers, such as Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, MD Anderson Cancer Center and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, are pursuing such studies in order to find genetic mutations that can be linked to a drug that failed in clinical trials or a different drug. Thus, patients with the same mutation but a different disease could benefit from the drug. The National Cancer Institute has also established an initiative to support such research. “Super responders” are also patients whose drug response was particularly poor. Novartis has begun sequencing the tumors of patients in clinical trials for multiple genetic mutations as a way to investigate “super responses.”

Source: Reuters