A NOVEL DRUG TEST DESIGNED TO COLLECT INFORMATION.

A NOVEL DRUG TEST DESIGNED TO COLLECT INFORMATION. Ron Winslow had an article in the Wall Street Journal (October 2-3) about I-Spy 2 The I-Spy 2 test is designed to find out how much success each of 5 different drugs will have against different kinds of breast cancer tumors (characterized by 10 different biomarkers).. Surgery is delayed for six months while the effect of the different drugs in shrinking the tumors is tested. If the drug is not successful with a patient, the patient is switched to another drug regimen (up to 12 new drugs will be tested eventually). A successful drug will graduate to a Phase III test with patients selected for the appropriate genetic profile. The design of the test has a number of advantages. Hopefully, it will pick out the successes of drugs which are effective against only one kind of tumor, but do not show effectiveness in a test against all tumors. It uses information on tumor shrinkage as an indicator of possible future effectiveness. It is an attempt to develop information quickly for later testing.