Boston-area collaboration compiles data for personalizing cancer care

Two Boston-area teams have assembled massive encyclopedias that predict the vulnerability of hundreds of different subtypes of cancer to dozens of drugs. The massive catalogs, which were made freely available online Wednesday, are an important step toward the routine personalizing of cancer care, in which patients will receive treatments tailored to the specific genetic changes that influence a tumor's response to drug regimens. Already, the data, which correlate cancer cells' genetic profiles with their sensitivity to medications, are being used to design more sophisticated early-stage clinical trials of drugs.