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The clinical success rate of new oncology drugs is only 3.4% compared to 20.9% in other disease types (Wong et al, 2018). One contributing factor to this issue is the testing systems used, with two-dimensional (2D) monolayer assay formats as the traditional mainstay of high throughput screening. Although 2D monolayer assays have identified many successful drugs, it is increasingly recognized that they do not accurately model key aspects of the three-dimensional (3D) tumor environment. Therefore, the adoption of high throughput screening approaches using 3D assays to complement 2D approaches could substantially improve prediction of clinical outcomes and reduce the high failure rate of cancer drugs in clinical trials.
A major study has been undertaken to gain a better understanding of thousands of mutations in the BRCA1 gene - a key gene in breast and ovarian cancers.