Cancers (Oct 2020)

Predictive Values of Blood-Based RNA Signatures for the Gemcitabine Response in Advanced Pancreatic Cancer

  • David Piquemal,
  • Florian Noguier,
  • Fabien Pierrat,
  • Roman Bruno,
  • Jerome Cros

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/cancers12113204
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 11
p. 3204

Abstract

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Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is expected to be the second cause of cancer death by 2022. For nearly 80% of patients, diagnosis occurs at an advanced, nonsurgical stage, making such patients incurable. Gemcitabine is still an important component in PDAC treatment and is most often used as a backbone to test new targeted therapies and there is, to date, no routine biomarker to predict its efficacy. Samples from a phase III randomized trial were used to develop through a large approach based on blood-based liquid biopsy, transcriptome profiling, and machine learning, a nine gene predictive signature for gemcitabine sensitivity. Patients with a positive test (41.6%) had a significantly longer progression free survival (PFS) (3.8 months vs. 1.9 months p = 0.03) and a longer overall survival (OS) (14.5 months vs. 5.1, p p = 0.025) and OS (HR = 0.39 (0.21–0.7) p = 0.002).

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