Oncogramme, a new promising method for individualized breast tumour response testing for cancer treatment

Breast cancer is the most widely spread cancer in the world, attracting much research and individualized tumour response testing (ITRT) methods are now used to individualize patient chemotherapeutic administrations. A new ITRT method was developed with optimized processing.

Breast tumour fragments were separated and the cells seeded in a foetal calf serum-free defined medium. After various chemotherapeutic treatments, cytotoxicity was determined by cell death detection with calcein acetoxymethyl and ethidium homodimer labelling.

The culture medium allowed breast tumour cell proliferation in culture, while preventing fibroblastic cell survival. Moreover, the cell death analysis gave rise to a chemoresistance profile called an Oncogramme, with statistically significant values.

The Oncogramme is a new ITRT method which can predict patient cell sensitivities to chemotherapeutics and should be validated by a new phase I clinical trial.