Platinum Resistance is in the Eye of the Beholder « Dr. Robert A. Nagourney – Rational Therapeutics – Blog including comments from Liz Mane +

Blogger's Note: pls read the whole article including comments for an accurate view of the opinions expressed
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Platinum Resistance is in the Eye of the Beholder « Dr. Robert A. Nagourney – Rational Therapeutics – Blog

 "I was recently apprised of an online conversation surrounding the treatment of platinum refractory and platinum resistant ovarian cancer. To clarify our terminology, platinum refractory disease refers to cancer that progresses during platinum therapy. This would be considered the most platinum resistant of the ovarian patients. The term “platinum resistant” developed over the last two decades, by Markman and others, is used to describe patients who initially respond to platinum-based chemotherapy and then relapse within six months of treatment.
While platinum refractory seems intuitively obvious, it has been suggested that platinum resistance is somewhat more arbitrary........ 
included comment from 
Liz Mane says:

March 30, 2012 at 7:24 pm

"Dr. N.
I am the one who opined on a chat room that most oncologists won’t redeploy carbo to platinum refractory patients right after unsuccessful front line platinum therapy. However, whoever alerted this comment to you omitted a crucial qualifying aspect of my argument.
...........(I have a Ph.D. in research science though not in bio medical field). My conclusion was,.......

abstract: Predicting platinum resistance in primary advanced ovarian cancer patients with an in vitro resistance index

PURPOSE:

We aimed to identify primary platinum resistance in epithelial ovarian cancer (OC) patients with FIGO stage III-IV disease by an in vitro drug-response assay and to correlate the findings with clinical response. We considered whether neoadjuvant chemotherapy or anatomic sample site and tumor heterogeneity would influence the results.

CONCLUSIONS:

This in vitro assay predicted primary platinum resistance, without misclassification of sensitive OC patients, and the results were significantly associated with PFS. We suggest that samples from primary tumor and metastatic samples have different responses to chemotherapy and that exposure to chemotherapy might induce in vitro platinum resistance.

Chemotherapy Resistance as a Predictor of Progression-Free Survival in Ovarian Cancer Patients Treated with Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy and Surgical Cytoreduction Followed by Intraperitoneal Chemotherapy: A Southwest Oncology Group Study

re: tumour assay testing
"Conclusions: While the small patient numbers in this trial do not permit definitive conclusions, these data fail to provide support for the argument that prospectively obtained in vitro data regarding platinum or paclitaxel resistance will be highly predictive of clinical outcome in advanced ovarian cancer."