Kenny and his team of high-caliber postdoctoral research fellows have been making remarkable strides in breast cancer research, sequencing tumors in order to match patients with the most relevant emerging drugs, as well as molecular tumor work.
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In 2016, Kenny’s team had success in using the the drug crizotinib, initially approved for use in lung cancer patients, on a patient with an MET-amplified (metastatic) triple negative breast tumor. After responding well to chemotherapy, which was successful in shrinking her tumor by 80%, the tumor manifested in her lung and was unresponsive to further chemotherapy.
Paraic Kenny
Through next-generation sequencing, the team discovered a genetic alteration. After consulting the state’s Precision Medicine Molecular Tumor Board, they recommended crizotinib, and the patient went on to survive several more months before developing another tumor, which failed to react to the drug.
Kenny’s team collects a sample from the new tumor, which undergoes a genetic test, to determine what changed and caused unresponsiveness. Because the patients have late stage cancer, with millions of cancer cells, “we typically see recurrence within several months to a year,” Kenny says. “Breast cancer, like all metastatic cancers, is a very challenging cancer.
Kenny and his team were the first worldwide to report efficacy of crizotinib in triple-negative breast cancer patients with MET mutations. As only one in 125 women with breast cancer have the MET alteration, a standard clinical test, done one gene at a time, would cost around $650 per patient. This would result in an expenditure of over $80,000 to find a single person who would likely respond to crizotinib.
