National Cancer Centre Singapore shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Cancer treatment is about to get more precise!
Congrats to Associate Prof Melvin L.K. Chua, co-author of a new Nature study demonstrating the first successful use of circulating tumour DNA to guide cancer treatment!
What was studied and discovered: Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) DNA is associated with worse outcomes for nasopharyngeal carcinoma when present in higher levels in the blood. The EP-STAR trial, a multi-centre phase II trial, tested whether a risk-adaptive treatment (RAT) strategy guided by EBV DNA levels found in NPC patients’ blood could improve survival outcomes. An impressive 89.1% of patients on the RAT strategy remained disease-free at 3 years, representing a marked 14.7% improvement over standard care, with excellent safety profiles and no treatment-related deaths
Key breakthrough: Going beyond a one-size-fits-all protocol, this innovative approach tracked DNA virus fragments in blood samples during treatment, then tailored subsequent therapy based on individual tumour response patterns – benefiting NPC patients who face higher recurrence risks with conventional approaches. ”
Title: Risk-adaptive therapy guided by dynamic ctDNA in nasopharyngeal carcinoma
Authors: Jiawei Lv, Dan-Xue Zheng, Jin-Hui Liang, Ning Zhang, Zu-Lu Ye, Xu-Dong Xu, Melvin L. K. Chua, Lu-Lu Zhang, Zi-Ming Du, Zi-Chen Zhang, Wen-Fei Li, Ling-Long Tang, Lei Chen, Yan-Ping Mao, Rui Guo, Yu-Pei Chen, Li Lin, Yuan Zhang, Xu Liu, Cheng Xu, Zhi-Xuan Li, Ling-Xin Xu, Pan-Yang Yang, Kun Chen, Deng Bin, Tian-Sheng Gao, Jian-Ye Yan, Lu-Si Chen, Shao Hui Huang, Hong-Yun Zhao, Shu-Bin Hong, Yu-Sheng Jie, Hui-Ling Huang, Xu-Hua Tang, Jing-Ping Yun, Li-Zhi Liu, Li Tian, Hao-Jiang Li, Ji-Bin Li, Guan-Qun Zhou, Jun Ma, Ying Sun
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