Gerhardt Attard, a Maltese clinician scientist in the UK, is heading a study on a blood test that could determine resistance to a widely-used cancer drug.

Patients in Malta could, in a few years’ time, be among those benefiting from a blood test that is able to identify genetic mutations that cause resistance to widely used cancer drugs, Maltese doctor Gerhardt Attard has said.

Dr Attard, who moved to the UK 12 years ago after studying medicine at the University of Malta, is leading a study into the blood test.

He is a clinician scientist at London’s Institute of Cancer Research and a consultant medical oncologist at the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.

“Our ultimate aim is to have the test available everywhere and that it would be cost-efficient enough to be used widely by all doctors. We are still conducting clinical trials but in the future I don’t see why this wouldn’t be available in Malta too ,” he said.

The test could improve the outcomes of administering the prostate cancer drug abiraterone by identifying which patients would not respond to the treatment.

About 50 researchers have been working on the study for four years and he envisages the test would be available in 2019 at a cost of no more than €140.

By looking at tumour DNA in the blood, doctors could get clearer pictures as to why the cancer is progressing

By developing such a test, Dr Attard said, doctors would be able to prevent having patients go through the ordeal of receiving treatment only to find out later it would not work. He said the blood test would also allow doctors to understand the cancer without having to take a biopsy.

“Tumour samples can be difficult to interpret and sometimes they are wrong. Very often, patients have tumours in multiple areas and so testing in this way does not work,” he said.

By looking at tumour DNA in the blood, doctors could get clearer pictures as to why the cancer would be progressing all over the body, Dr Attard said. This would be unlike a biopsy, which only gave information on the specific areas sampled.

Dr Attard’s team is now working on a clinical study involving about 600 men. This could take up to four years.