Gene May Predict If Cancer Patients Will Recover

Main Category: Cancer / Oncology
Also Included In: Lymphoma / Leukemia;  Genetics
Article Date: 01 Sep 2007 - 1:00 PST

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The more scientists learn about cancer, the more they're finding that it can be as unique as the patients themselves. That's why the recent discovery of a certain gene is so important. Doctors say the gene might help them design a specific treatment plan that will work best for individual patients - especially those with acute myeloid leukemia.

Even after her own personal battle with AML, Linda Cohen is still fighting it. Only now, she's lacing up and doing it one step at a time in a program called "Team in Training", which raises money for research that might help other leukemia patients.

"As soon as I was done with chemotherapy, and released after my final round, I joined Team in Training so that six months later, I could do the Anchorage marathon," says Cohen.

Linda realizes she's fortunate. Only about 40% of AML patients are cured.* That number is much better than it was a generation ago, but for cancer researchers, it needs to get better.

"The challenge is: how do we identify the 40% of patients who are going to be cured with our current treatment from those which are going to die," says Clara Bloomfield, MD, at Ohio State University's Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Identifying those patients could help doctors determine from the outset how aggressive treatment should be. And now, they may have some help. Researchers at Ohio State University's Comprehensive Cancer Center have discovered a gene that might indicate if a patient will respond to a treatment or not. It's called ERG. Experts say the more of this type of gene a patient has, the worse they do with treatment. It's especially true with AML. But tests show it might also apply to prostate and other cancers as well.

"So it seems to be a gene that has a lot of importance in cancer, broadly, not just in the myeloid leukemias," says Bloomfield. It's exactly that kind of finding that keeps Linda on the road, hoping to raise money and awareness so someone else has a chance to beat cancer like she did.

Researchers say cancer patients who have higher levels of ERG are six times more likely to relapse than those who don't.** The study was published online in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

* Overview: Leukemia - Acute Myeloid (AML), American Cancer Society, http://www.cancer.org

** High Expression Levels of the ETS-Related Gene, ERG, Predict Adverse Outcome and Improve Molecular Risk-Based Classification of Cytogenetically Normal Acute Myeloid Leukemia: A Cancer and Leukemia Group B Study
Journal of Clinical Oncology, Vol 25, No 22 (August 1), 2007: pp. 3337-3343
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