Targeted therapies: Smart tumor, smarter treatment

摘要

Treatment of melanoma has changed drastically with the development of the first inhibitor of BRAF, vemurafenib. BRAF is mutated in 70% of patients with melanoma and treatment with vemurafenib has led to significant tumor responses in 80% of these patients. Although with not such high frequency (approximately 10%), BRAF is also mutated in colorectal cancers (CRC), however, only 5% of these CRC tumors with mutated BRAF respond to vemurafenib. Rene Bernards and his colleagues were interested in unravelling the mechanisms of intrinsic resistance of CRC to vemurafenib. To that end, they carried out an RNA interference genetic screen to identify,, genes that modulate the response of CRC tumor cells to vemurafenib and found that knocking down EGFR with short-hairpin RNA resulted in sensitivity to the drug.