In research: Medical News: AACR: Gene Copy Number May Predict Success in Ovarian Cancer - in Meeting Coverage, AACR from MedPage Today

Note: in research:
WASHINGTON -- The number of copies of certain genes -- especially those that are associated with apoptosis -- may signal whether a patient with ovarian cancer will respond to therapy, researchers suggested here.


"Differences between patients responding to therapy and those that progress might be related to the increase in copy number of genes involved with apoptosis in patients responding to therapy," Soheil Shams, PhD, chief science officer at BioDiscovery, in El Segundo, Calif., said at his poster presentation at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Shams and colleagues used software developed by his company to scrutinize the numbers of copies of genes from tissue samples of 15 ovarian cancer patients who progressed despite therapy and compared them with 130 patients who achieved complete response to treatment.

The series of studies included 218 blood-derived samples, 237 primary tumor tissue samples, and 35 normal tissue samples, he reported.

"We identified significant regions of copy number change covering a genome area composed of a total of 1,049 genes," Shams told MedPage Today. "The most significant of these were in the 6p21.1 - 6p12.1 regions. Other regions include a number of well-known genes related to the induction of apoptosis that were amplified in complete responders but showed DNA loss in tissue samples of patients whose disease progressed."

The researchers also determined that the 5p chromosome region can be a predictor of response to therapy. "Those with gains in 5p had a much better prognosis than those with a 5p loss," Shams said. The gain in copy numbers resulted in significantly longer survival (P=0.034) when compared with those patients exhibiting a loss of copy number in this area, Shams illustrated.

"The use of this technology is a reasonable approach to determining if genetic copy number could some day be used for determining which therapy to use in patients with ovarian cancer," said Anil Sood, MD, professor and director of the Blanton-Davis Ovarian Cancer Research Program at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston.

"There have been a lot of approaches taken to investigate which patients will respond to therapy," Sood told MedPage Today. "This could be another of these."