Clinical OMICs - Issue 8 - (Page 5)

Clinical OMICs NEWS Predicting Breast Cancer Patients' Treatment Responses to Tamoxifen S www.clinicalomics.com RNA expression data from publically available datasets, the team was able to translate results from cell culture experiments into a diagnostic tool that has the potential to help identify breast cancer patients that will benefit from tamoxifen," according to Dr. Bernards To find out whether loss of function of certain genes is involved in resistance to tamoxifen, Dr. Bernards and colleagues took human hormone receptor-positive breast cancer cells and infected them with thousands of shRNAs, each designed to silence a specific gene. By studying the shRNAs that survived despite treatment Researchers at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam have identified a gene signature that has the potential to predict which patients with estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer will benefit from tamoxifen. with tamoxifen, they identified a gene called USP9X, whose loss of function in breast cancer cells resulted in tamoxifen resistance. (continued on p. 29) Maximizing the Efﬁcacy of Genetic Testing G enetic counselling services provider InformedDNA has released a white paper on genetic testing. Use of these diagnostic tests is growing rapidly, but inappropriate testing has negative consequences for individuals and the U.S. health care system, according to the company. The paper, titled Genetic Counseling: Connecting Patients to the Power of Genetics and authored by Rebecca Sutphen, M.D., Amber Trivedi, and Kelle Steenblock, delves into the complexity of testing, gaps in physician understanding, issues regarding access, Time to prune testing overgrowth? current guidelines, and the role of trained genetics specialists in helping patients maximize the effectiveness of genetic (continued on p. 21) August 13, 2014 Clinical OMICs 5 Image © lightsource-Deposit Photos cientists in the Netherlands say they have used a novel technique to identify a gene signature they believe has the potential to be used in the clinic to predict which patients with estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer will benefit from tamoxifen therapy after surgery. Their study ("USP9X Downregulation Renders Breast Cancer Cells") appears in Cancer Research. "We have used a very innovative approach to identify genes that help foretell whether a patient will respond to tamoxifen, and we showed that this gene signature performed well in two large patient groups," said René Bernards, Ph.D., professor and head of the division of molecular carcinogenesis at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam. "About one-third of women with hormone receptor-positive breast cancer experience a relapse after adjuvant treatment with tamoxifen. Median overall survival in these patients, even with further treatment, is around 30 to 45 months," explained Dr. Bernards. "It has been very difficult to identify patients whose tumors lack a proper response to tamoxifen, the most frequently used drug in breast cancer. By using CHIP-Seq and RNA-Seq technologies in combination with http://www.clinicalomics.com

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Clinical OMICs - Issue 8