Doctors from more than 40 countries have begun the first global study of why some people with cancer beat the odds and survive so much longer than expected.
Many cancer specialists have anecdotal stories of patients who have overcome even the most aggressive forms of the disease, despite being given only months to live.
Sky News reports that the Rosalind study will now bring together large numbers of these “super survivors”, allowing scientists to look for clues to why they have responded so well to treatment, while others die.
In the past doctors may have put stark differences in survival down to luck.
But Dr Thankamma Ajithkumar, who is leading the British arm of the study at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Trust, said the hunt was on for a more scientific reason.
“This is the first time anybody has tried to answer the question of why there is a select group of people who do exceptionally well after these dreadful cancers,” he told Sky News.
“We will have a much larger database to say more confidently that this is what is making you live longer.”
The study will focus on some of the most aggressive forms of the disease – extensive-stage small cell lung cancer, the brain cancer glioblastoma, and metastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.
Just 3% to 5% of patients are still alive five years after diagnosis.
Scientists in more than 40 countries – including eight cancer centres in the UK – will take part in the study, in which they will analyse detailed biological information from more than 1 000 patients and their tumours, comparing genetic mutations, proteins and other factors that may determine their response to treatment.
‘We might find targets for drugs’
Ajithkumar said: “We hope to answer our basic curiosity of why somebody is alive. “And second, we might find a number of targets for future drugs.”
The study is being run by French biotech startup Cure51, with backing from the venture capital firm Sofinnova.
Nicolas Wolikow, Cure51’s co-founder, said the aim was to “kill cancer” in 20 years.
“If we could unlock these biological mechanisms that are possessed by these survivors and replicate that for the majority of patients, I think we could do it.”
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