Evaluate the effectiveness
The RNA of tumor cells will allow you to choose an individual therapy
Scientists from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, together with colleagues, for the first time developed a method for the individual selection of gastric cancer therapy based on the data of RNA sequencing of tumor cells. The study was done with the support of the Russian Science Foundation (RNF) and published in the scientific journal Cold Spring Harbor Molecular Case Studies (Sorokin et al., RNA sequencing profiles and diagnostic signatures linked with response to ramucirumab in gastric cancer), the press service of MIPT briefly told about it.
Stomach cancer ranks fifth in terms of mortality among oncological diseases. This disease is rarely diagnosed in the early stages, which complicates treatment. Several protocols have been developed for the treatment of stomach cancer using chemotherapeutic drugs and therapeutic antibodies. However, the response of the patient's body to treatment is often unpredictable. This requires an individual selection of drugs for each patient – personalized therapy.
For the treatment of complex, recurrent stomach tumors, therapeutic antibodies are used that block the receptors of cell growth factors on their surface. As a result, the cell "does not hear" signals about the need for reproduction coming from outside, and does not divide. This approach allows you to stop the growth of the tumor. Vascular germination is especially critical, since the active growth of the tumor requires the supply of nutrients and oxygen from the blood. The therapeutic antibody ramucirumab (cyramza) blocks the growth factor receptor on vascular cells, stopping their reproduction. As a result, the growth of blood vessels in the tumor tissue stops. However, the effectiveness of treatment with this drug varies greatly for different patients.
Bioinformatics from MIPT together with medical colleagues proposed using data on the individual level of gene expression in cancer cells to assess the effectiveness of ramucirumab for the treatment of a particular patient. "In fact, this was the first published success in prescribing this drug to patients with stomach cancer not randomly, but based on the analysis of molecular markers that we track based on the results of RNA sequencing," comments Maxim Sorokin, senior researcher at the Laboratory of Translational Genomic Bioinformatics at MIPT and head of the bioinformatics department at Oncobox.
Modern methods of molecular biology in combination with information technologies make it possible to obtain quantitative information about the expression of all genes in a cell. The analysis of these data helps to find the key to the diagnosis and prediction of the effectiveness of cancer therapy.
In addition to the staff of the Laboratory of Translational Genomic Bioinformatics at MIPT, their colleagues from the I. M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University, the M. M. Shemyakin and Yu. A. Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the N. N. Blokhin National Research Center of Oncology, the VitaMin Clinical Center, the Moscow Regional Scientific- M. F. Vladimirsky Research Clinical Institute and Oncobox Company.
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