Published: 18 January 2013

Predicting response to chemotherapy in bowel cancer

Researchers, part-funded by the HRB, at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) and Beaumont Hospital have developed a new method of predicting which patients with bowel (colorectal) cancer will respond effectively to chemotherapy.

The discovery could, in the future, help identify individuals who will not respond to chemotherapy, before they commence treatment, and may therefore require additional therapies. The new tool measures the amount of drug required for a cancer cell to die without harming healthy tissue. The results are published in the current issue of the prestigious Cancer Research journal.  More information is available from the press release on the RCSI website at the link below.