H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center used HistoRx’ AQUA-based assays to measure expression levels of RRM1 and ERCC1 in lung cancer patients.
High expression of a combination of the RRM1 and ERCC1 proteins is associated with increased lung cancer survival rates, according to a study from the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute.
The research team, led by Gerold Bepler, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine and oncology at Moffitt, used the HistoRx PM-2000™ instrument and AQUA® technology. They measured expression levels of RRM1 (the regulatory subunit of ribonucleotide reductase) and ERCC1 (excision repair cross complementation group 1 protein) in tumors from 187 patients with early-stage non-small-cell-lung cancer by analyzing the fluorescent immunohistochemistry.
The in situ biomarker profiling system generated quantitative measurements of patient protein levels. Theses scores were correlated with patient survival.
The researchers concluded that the combination of RRM1 and ERCC1 is a determinant of survival for patients in the high-expression group. Overall survival in this segment was more than twice that of low-expression patients.
The study is published in the February 22, 2007 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.
