Scientists test 5,000 combinations of 100 existing cancer drugs to find more effective treatments

Scientists in the United States have tested all possible pairings of the 100 cancer drugs approved for use in patients in order to discover whether there are any combinations not tried previously that are effective in certain cancers. Dr Susan Holbeck, a biologist in the Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis at the National Cancer Institute (USA), reported at a plenary session of the 24th EORTC-NCI-AACR Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics that she and her colleagues have completed testing the 100 drugs, with 300,000 experiments to test the 5,000 possible drug combinations in a panel of 60 cell lines developed by the National Cancer Institute. The goal is to identify novel drug combinations that are more active than the single agents alone. Since these are all approved agents, there is the potential to rapidly translate these combinations into the clinic. Read more here.