Study findings support the use of a personalised medicine approach to treat Soft Tissue Sarcomas
Published: 06 May 2025
Credit: 123rf
A collaborative study led by researchers from the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), National Cancer Centre Singapore (NCCS), and the National University of Singapore (NUS), in partnership with KYAN Technologies, highlights advancements in treating soft tissue sarcomas (STS) through precision medicine. Published in npj Precision Oncology in March 2025, the study emphasises the potential of data-driven and phenotypic screening for STS treatment.
STS, though rare and comprising less than 1% of global cancers, significantly impact 20% of paediatric and young adult cancer patients. Conventional chemotherapy is often ineffective, and the tumours’ biological diversity and rarity have made large-scale trials challenging. The study postulated that precision medicine, analysing each patient’s unique tumour characteristics, could improve treatment outcomes.
Utilizing the Quadratic Phenotypic Optimisation Platform (QPOP), the researchers applied precision medicine to STS. QPOP efficiently identifies effective cancer treatment combinations using approved drugs and investigational treatments with a quick turnaround time of 7 days. The study found that over 70% of patient responses to standard of care treatments matched with ex vivo testing results, validating QPOP’s accuracy and reliability.
The research identified unconventional drug combinations for patients unresponsive to standard treatments. Moreover, a new combination of AZD5153 (a BRD4 inhibitor) and pazopanib (a multi-kinase blocker) showed effectiveness across multiple STS subtypes, suppressing challenging oncogenes like MYC.
Assistant Professor Valerie Yang, lead author from NCCS and Joint Research Clinician and Group Leader at ASTAR IMCB, emphasised the potential of ex vivo drug testing in predicting patient responses and providing vital treatment insights. Co-authors Dr. Tan Boon Toh, Head of the Translational Core Laboratory at the N.1 Institute for Health at NUS and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Digital Medicine (WisDM) at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, and Dr. Edward Kai-Hua Chow from NUS, along with Dr. Xing Yi Woo from ASTAR Bioinformatics Institute, contributed their bioinformatics expertise to the study. Further clinical trials are being planned to explore QPOP’s application to other cancer types.
Read more in the press release here.
