Lung Cancer Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Lung Cancer, including details on symptoms, smoking, genetics, treatment, causes.

Identification of postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy responders in non-small cell lung cancer by novel biomarker.

Hirano T, Kato H, Maeda M, Gong Y, Shou Y, Nakamura M, Maeda J, Yashima K, Kato Y, Akimoto S, Ohira T, Tsuboi M, Ikeda N

Department of Surgery, Tokyo Medical University, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, Japan. thirano@tokyo-med.ac.jp

Cisplatin-based (CDDP-based) adjuvant chemotherapy of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) was reported to yield 5-15% improvement in 5-year survival compared to complete resection alone. The importance of information concerning preselection of good responders has become increasingly evident. The purpose of our study is the establishment of a preselection of good responders for CDDP-based adjuvant chemotherapy. We investigated protein expressions comparing intensity between parent strains (H69 and PC14 lung cancer cultured cells) and resistant strains against CDDP using 2-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (2-DE). Immunohistochemically, we evaluated the relationship between protein expression associated with CDDP-resistance and the clinical effects of platinum-based postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy using 126 surgically-resected NCLC materials. We detected 2 kinds of polypeptides that changed expression levels on 2-DE gels. The analyses of the amino acid sequence showed that these polypeptides were reticulocalbin (RCN) and glutathione-S-transferase-pi (GST-pi). The 2-DE analysis showed decreased expression in RCN and overexpression in GST-pi with the acquisition of CDDP-drug resistance. RCN-transfectant of H69 CDDP-resistant strain showed intermediate sensitivity between the parent strain and the CDDP-resistant strain. RCN-positive cases showed a statistically significant better disease-free survival only in the cases receiving postoperative platinum-based adjuvant chemotherapy after curative resection (p = 0.007). In addition, cases that were both RCN-positive and GST-pi-negative showed a statistically significantly better outcome (p = 0.0150). In the cases without postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy no relationship between the outcome and these expressions was seen. The evaluation of RCN and GST-pi might provide valuable information concerning postoperatively therapeutic strategy from the standpoint of individualized postoperative therapy.

Published 21 September 2005 in Int J Cancer, 117(3): 460-8.
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