Priming chemo prediction
Researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have developed an in vitro assay that predicts patient response to chemotherapy by directly measuring how prone cells are to apoptosis.1 Eutropics Pharmaceuticals Inc. has exclusively licensed the assay and is pursuing it as a prognostic indicator of chemotherapy effectiveness in multiple cancers.
Chemotherapy resistance is difficult to predict because many distinct pathways lead to resistance in different cancers. One common mechanism is overexpression of members of the B cell lymphoma 2 (BCL-2; BCL2) family, which causes resistance to chemotherapy-induced apoptosis. However this family consists of approximately 20 proteins with either pro- or antiapoptotic activity, and thus it can be difficult to accurately predict how prone cells are to apoptosis by measuring levels of BCL2 protein expression...