Researchers Are Creating ''Bar Codes'' of Tumors to Help Determine Best Course of Treatment
By Kay Quinn, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 9, 2006
Bar codes like the ones that tally the cost of your food at the supermarket and keep track of your luggage at the airport are being used to help find a cure for breast cancer.
"Nothing could be more important in breast cancer research," says Dr. Matthew Ellis, director of the breast cancer program at the Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine and a lead researcher on the Cancer Genome Atlas Project. By creating bar codes of individual breast tumors, Ellis and his colleagues are starting to create an atlas of genetic changes that take place when cancer forms.
The bar code is created by a machine called a laser capture micro-dissection device, which identifies thousands of genetic characteristics in each tumor. Collect enough bar codes in the atlas, and doctors believe they''ll have enough information to identify the best treatment in each newly diagnosed patient.
Karen Dampier of Jennings, a mother, grandmother and artist, was asked to allow doctors to bar code her tumor when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in November 2004.
"It just sounded like, ''I''ve got to go for my life here,''" Dampier, 55, recalls of the day researchers approached her. "I''ve got four kids, and three of those are girls. I''ve got four grandchildren; two of those are granddaughters."
After her tumor was gene-chipped, Ellis and his colleagues recommended a drug they believed would cause her tumor to shrink rapidly. Dampier''s tumor went from the size of a tennis ball to the size of a pea in four months.
"She, in all likelihood, is an example of a patient who is going to be cured by something very simple like a pill a day," Ellis says. "Maybe one day we''ll be able to work out the fact that, patients like Karen, all we need to give them is a pill a day. You didn''t need to torture her with chemotherapy. Right now, we''re not smart enough to do that."
The work doesn''t stop at creating bar codes. Ellis and his colleagues plan to grow copies of tumors, create bar codes of those, and eventually use the duplicate tumors to determine which cancer drugs work best.
It will take years to create the cancer genome atlas, but the work is being called critical in the search for a cure.
"If we''re going to get to the goal of a cure for everyone, we have to address the complexity of the breast cancer genome," Ellis says.
Washington University''s micro-dissection device and the machine that creates the bar codes were paid for with money raised by the Komen St. Louis Race for the Cure.