BACKGROUND:  Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide, killing millions of people every year. Of the different types of cancers, breast cancer is the leading cause of death among women, affecting over one million women worldwide every year. Currently, dasatinib is approved to treat chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) and is in development to treat solid tumors, including breast cancer. However, there is a need to be able to identify patients most likely to respond to drugs like dasatinib. New diagnostics methods will be especially useful for women whose breast cancers fall under a specific "triple negative" subtype (estrogen receptor negative, progesterone receptor negative, and HER2 negative), and therefore lack effective treatments. Due to the lack of effective treatments, there is a need to identify the patients that might benefit from dasatinib.

INNOVATION:  UCLA researchers have identified predictive markers to identify human breast cancer cells that are likely to respond to dasatinib or to therapy with another SRC kinase inhibitor. This unique gene set has been identified by using an in vitro pharmocogenomic approach.

POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS 

• Use markers to identify individuals who are likely to respond, or are responsive, to therapy with dasatinib or other SRC kinase inhibitors
• Predict response of dasatinib to treat the "triple negative" subset of women with breast cancer

ADVANTAGES

• Predicts efficacy and response of dasatinib therapy on "triple negative" breast cancer subtypes
• Genes expressed in patients with specific breast cancer subtypes may be sensitive to therapy with SRC kinase inhibitors
• Predictive markers may be used in clinical development of compounds to treat solid tumors

DEVELOPMENT-TO-DATE:  Inventors have employed the approach in human breast cancer cell lines in vitro. These markers will need to be validated in a clinical setting.

Reference: UCLA Case No. 2006-263

PCT Application: US/2006/060776