Initiative to refine quest for better breast cancer drugs

Breast cancer sufferers could eventually benefit from high-tuned, tailor-made drug treatments that minimise side effects as a result of a joint initiative between computer scientists in Edinburgh and cellular biologists in Japan.

The five-year project, which involves the University of Edinburgh and the Riken Genomic Research Centre in Japan, will initially look at why particular treatments for breast cancer work in some patients and not in others.

It will use advanced computer systems set up at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Informatics to run programmes incorporating expertise from cellular biologists in Japan to better understand the make-up of particular drugs and why their effectiveness differs among patients.

It is hoped that the database, which will use clinical information from patients at the Edinburgh Breast Unit and Cancer Research Centre, will be able to narrow down the different types of drugs that should be prescribed to individual patients and what types of combination therapy would have the best outcome.

The database could also provide information for creating new drugs, with computer modelling becoming an integral part of medical research.

Igor Goryanin, director of the Edinburgh Centre for Bioinformatics, based at the University, said: “The computer systems will help the biologist to understand the function of the organisms and, with this knowledge, we will be able to predict more accurately which new and existing drugs work and why.

“We would hope to further our research further and look at other cancers as well as diseases such as heart disease and neural and psychiatric diseases. Identifying which drugs have the best responses in particular patients would not only save lives but would also save the NHS money as treatment with expensive drugs can be tailor-made for whom it works.”

For further information, please contact:

Tara Womersley, Press Office

Tel: 0131 650 9836

Joanne Morrison, Press Office

Tel: 07979 446209

Igor Goryanin, School of Informatics

Tel: 07720 897334

Edinburgh Site wins Prize

The Health Agents consortium site was one of three winners of the Best IST Project Website Award.

Edinburgh's contributions to the consortium's work on work on distributed decision support for brain tumour diagnosis and prognosis include our expertise in Natural Language Processing, and responsibility for visibility and public awareness of the project—including the winning web site.

Congratulations to all involved—in particular to Horacio González–Vélez, the scientific dissemination leader for HealthAgents.