Washington, June 2 (ANI): A new research has proved that a change in a specific gene can identify which patients with a particular kind of brain cancer would respond better to treatment.
According to the researchers, testing for the gene can differentiate between patients with a more- or less-aggressive form of glioblastoma, the most common and an often-fatal type of primary brain cancer.
The study dealt with a gene called MGMT in tumors, taken as a sample from 833 glioblastoma patients. It showed that when the gene promoter is replaced by a chemical change called methylation, patients respond better to treatment.
"We show that MGMT methylation represents a new genetic test that can predict clinical outcomes in glioblastoma patients who have been treated with radiation combined with the chemotherapeutic drug temozolomide," said co-author Dr. Arnab Chakravarti, chair and professor of Radiation Oncology and co-director of the brain tumor program at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - Arthur G. James Comprehensive Cancer Center and Richard J. Solove Research Institute.
The study has validated that finding patients with tumors carrying the methylated gene had an overall survival of 21 months against those with the unmethylated gene as they survived for 14 months.
The study will be presented by principal investigator Dr. Mark Gilbert, professor of neuro-oncology at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, on June 5, at the 2011 American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting in Chicago. (ANI)
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