Transcriptional profiling of tumor biopsies in oncology trials--a 'window' of opportunity for evaluating new drugs in nasopharyngeal cancer?

摘要

Historically, microarray-based expression profiling of tumor tissues has been used to identify molecular signatures that can promote the precise classification and prognostication of human cancers. There is a recent move toward applying this tool in the development of targeted drugs in oncology, where transcriptional profiling of tumor samples are performed for the purpose of elucidating the mechanisms of drug action and identifying biomakers of drug response [ 1 ]. In this issue of the Annals of Oncology, Dr Soo et al. report an interesting study on the pharmacodynamic evaluation of celecoxib that focused on whether it could alter global gene expression, microvessel density (MVD) and proliferation index (Ki-67) in nasopharyngeal cancer (NPC).