Specially created flies, mice and fish are guiding cancer treatment
Specially created flies, mice and fish are guiding tailored cancer treatment
EVERY person’s cancer is different. While a certain cancer treatment might see off one person’s breast cancer,
it may fail to work on someone else’s, and it can be difficult to know which drugs will be the best for a specific tumour.
Now doctors are starting to test out their options on animals that have been given replicas of an individual’s cancer – known as “cancer avatars”. One method is to generate Drosophila fruit flies with the same genetic mutations as a
person’s cancer. These flies are small and breed fast, so lots of them can be generated in multiple rows of test tubes. Robotic equipment can then screen the effectiveness of hundreds of drug combinations on the flies. This approach was used to guide...














