BACKGROUND:  Colon cancer is the third most common form of cancer in the United States. Therapy is usually invasive - surgery, followed by chemotherapy. Due to the lack of treatments that are effective for all cancer patients, there is a need to identify the patients that might benefit from specific anti-cancer drugs. Currently, dasatinib is approved to treat chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) and is in development to treat solid tumors, such as colon cancer. It would be useful to be able to predict the therapeutic effect of dasatinib and similar pharmaceuticals in individual colon cancer patients.

INNOVATION:  Investigators at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine have identified predictive markers that can identify human colon cancer cell lines that are likely to respond to dasatinib or to other similar kinase inhibitors. A group of genes have been identified whose expression is higher in cell lines that are sensitive to dasatinib than in those who are resistant.

POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS 

• Personalized cancer therapy
• Identification of individuals who are likely to respond to therapy with dasatinib or other SRC kinase inhibitors
• Prediction of patient response to dasatinib or similar medications for the treatment of colon cancer patients resistant to other medications

ADVANTAGES

• Predicts efficacy and response of dasatinib therapy before the course of treatment, preventing unnecessary drug administration
• Genes expressed in patients with the colon cancer subtype sensitive to dasatinib may also be sensitive to therapy with other SRC kinase inhibitors
• Predictive markers may be used in clinical development of compounds to treat solid tumors

DEVELOPMENT-TO-DATE:  The inventors have demonstrated in vitro that human colon cancer cell lines sensitive to dasatinib can be predicted. These markers will need to be validated in a clinical setting.

Reference: UCLA Case No. 2008-487