CHEMOTHERAPY treatment could be personalised to target specific cancer cells, researchers have found.

Scientists at the University of Sussex believe medicine could be developed which ‘reads’ a cancer patient’s DNA and only attacks defective cells.

This is in contrast to the scattergun approach of conventional chemotherapy, which attacks all dividing cells, including healthy ones.

Researchers analysed the patterns of mutations found in the DNA sequences of tumours from more than 5,000 cancer patients.

The team was jointly led by Frances Pearl, head of the university’s bioinformatics research group, and Bissan Al-Lazikani from the Institute of Cancer Research in London.

They focused on the DNA repair systems that protect the genetic information of the cell, and are mutated in almost all cancers.

Breaking these systems for DNA repair allows cancer cells to divide uncontrollably and generate even more mutations – helping them become resistant to chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

Dr Pearl said: “Knowing which DNA repair processes are defective in an individual tumour allows us to target new drugs that are only toxic to cells with a particular pattern of mutations – i.e. cancer cells.

“This analysis shows that there are many other cancers where new targeted drugs could selectively kill tumours with DNA repair defects.

“This potentially means thousands more cancer patients could be saved from the horrible side-effects of chemotherapy by receiving precision medicine, which doesn’t kill the body’s healthy cells.”

The university is home to the Genome Damage and Stability Centre, one of the largest concentrations of scientists studying DNA repair in the world.