Early prognosis for genotoxic cancer therapies provided by quantifying ERCC1 and/or TS mRNA from tumour tissue for using a platinum-based chemotherapeutic regimen

摘要

Prognostic methods that are useful in medicine, particularly cancer chemotherapy are described. The object is to provide a method for assessing TS and/or ERCC1 expression levels in fixed or fixed and paraffin embedded tissues and prognosticate the probable resistance of a patient's tumour to treatment with 5-FU and oxaliplatin-based therapies by examination of the amount of TS and/or ERCC1 mRNA in a patient's tumour cell sample and comparing it with a predetermined threshold expression level for those genes. More specifically, provided are oligonucleotide primer pairs ERCC1 and TS and methods comprising their use for detecting levels of ERCC1 and TS mRNA, respectively.