Researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Moores Cancer Center have used computer simulations of cancer cells – cancer avatars – to identify drugs most likely to kill cancer cells isolated from patients’ brain tumors. The findings, published in May 21 online issue of the Journal of Translational Medicine, may help researchers stratify cancer patients for clinical trials according to their cancers’ genomic signatures and predicted sensitivities to different cancer drugs. Such an approach would allow scientists to selectively test cancer drugs on those who would be most likely to respond to them, while simultaneously reducing patients’ exposures to toxic drugs that would likely be ineffective. “Genomics tells us that cancers are a lot like snowflakes. No two cancers are alike so it does not make sense to give all patients the same drugs. This is the idea behind personalizing therapies for cancer,” said lead author Sandeep Pingle, MD, PhD, a project scientist in the laboratory of Santosh Kesari, MD, PhD, chief of the division of Neuro-Oncology, professor in the department of neurosciences, director of Neuro-Oncology at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center and the study’s senior author. “With the virtual cell model, we can take
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