[PaulW]

Hi Pan,

Many thanks for your response which makes perfect sense, in fact it matches my understanding of the situation regarding TP53 mutations and their interactions with specific cancer treatments.

It seems to me that it could be useful for those with LFS to collate a list of scientific papers that provide information on the interaction between specific cancer treatments and TP53 status in tumours. The paper you sent me via my blog is a good example of this type of information, another one is this study that I found that looks at the efficacy of different treatments for TP53 mutated breast cancer (I feel that this paper also does a very good job of illustrating the subtelty of the topic):

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18544968

I know there many complications and caveats here, but it seems to me that people with LFS are likely to have a higher percentage of tumours with TP53 mutations than the broader population and that as a result, even in the absence of any specific sequencing of tumour genes, it could be interesting for LFS sufferers to be aware of what the research says about how the efficacy of a specific type of treatment may be impacted where tumour TP53 is mutated.

This topic does not seem to be something that my oncologist has a handle on and I’m sure he is not alone in this; well informed patients may be able to stimulate some additional research and consideration on this issue from their oncologists and this could result in more well informed treatment decisions.

I would be happy to provide links to the papers that I find on this topic and these could then perhaps be made available from this site?

Best Regards,
Paul.

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