Gene Test Used in PSMA Targeting Therapies such as Lutetium 177.

[Defense]

The Institute for Cancer Research in the United Kingdom is conducting research using gene tests to identify which patients will benefit from PSMA targeting therapies such as Lutetium 177.

"The researchers analysed tumour samples from men with advanced prostate cancer who had been treated at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, in order to try to understand why the response to search-and-destroy treatment varied.

They found that the target for these new treatments – a protein molecule called prostate-specific membrane antigen, or PSMA – was present at higher levels on the surface of cancer cells in some patients than others. PSMA levels even varied substantially between different cancer sites in the same patient.

But crucially, the amount of PSMA on the surface of cancer cells was more than four times higher in tumours where there were also faults in DNA repair genes.

That means that testing for genetic faults in DNA repair genes could be used as a first-stage screen to select patients for PSMA-targeted treatment – followed by having tumours scanned using PSMA imaging technology.

The researchers believe that PSMA plays a key role in keeping the genome in cells stable – and could be produced by tumours as a survival mechanism where they are defective in repairing their DNA. This could explain the link between DNA repair faults and high levels of PSMA.

These findings also suggest that combination therapy with other drugs that increase genetic instability could make prostate tumours more likely to respond to PSMA-targeting treatments."

[Claud68]

Tank you very much for this interesting post!

[snoraste]

Thanks!