A study of SMARCA/BRG1 expression in patients with non-small cell lung (NSCLC) cancer has found that it is a significant indicator of prognosis and a novel predictive biomarker for increased sensitivity to platinum-based chemotherapy.
Biomarkers play a key role in helping clinicians identify patients with cancer early and determining what treatment will lead to the best results. In an article published in Clinical Cancer Research, authors evaluated the role of SMARCA/BRG1, a known regulator of transcription and DNA repair, in the prognosis of patients with NSCLC and its relation to the efficacy of adjuvant platinum-based therapies.
-----
Related Content
New Biomarker for Lung Cancer Prognosis Identified
Predictive Biomarker for Panitumumab Therapy Effectiveness in Patients With Colorectal Cancer
-----
For their analysis, researchers led by Erica Hlavin Bell, PhD, The Ohio State University, Columbus, looked at gene-expression microarray data from the Director’s Challenge Lung Study (N = 440) to determine the biomarker’s prognostic value. To evaluate predictive significance of the biomarker, they used data obtained through the use of a gene-expression microarray from the control and treatment arms of the JBR.10 trial of adjuvant cisplatin with vinorelbine. Statistical analyses were used to estimate the impact of biomarker expression and treatment on overall and disease-specific survival.
In the Director’s Challenge Lung Study, reduced expression of SMARCA4 was associated with poor overall survival compared with medium and high expression. Multivariate analysis also showed that high SMARCA4 expression correlated with a decrease in patients’ risk of death.
In the JBR.10 trial, low SMARCA4 expression led to improved 5-year disease-specific survival in patients treated with cisplatin/vinorelbine, an associated that was deemed highly significant after further statistical modeling.
From these results, researchers concluded that the expression of protein SMARCA/BRG1 is an indicator of prognosis in patients with NSCLC and also a significant predictive biomarker for increased sensitivity to platinum-based chemotherapy.
