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ARTICLE | Translation in Brief

Gene, score, match

Matching tumors to drugs based on gene expression profiles

August 31, 2017 5:16 PM UTC

In a departure from standard cancer drug discovery methods that match targeted therapies to tumors, a UCSF group has developed a systems-based approach that predicts efficacy based on how well a drug reverses the entire spectrum of disease-associated changes in gene expression.

The methodology, outlined last month in Nature Communications, uses two types of gene expression profiles -- one of drug-induced changes in gene expression, and another of disease-associated changes -- to match a cancer's expression profile with a compound that reverts that profile to one that more closely matches the healthy state...