Pretreatment gene expression profiles can be used to predict response to neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy in esophageal cancer

Abstract

Background: The use of neoadjuvant therapy, in particular chemoradiotherapy (CRT), in the treatment of esophageal cancer (EC) remains controversial. The ability to predict treatment response in an individual EC patient would greatly aid therapeutic planning. Gene expression profiles of EC were measured and relationship to therapeutic response assessed. Methods: Tumor biopsy samples taken from 46 EC patients before neoadjuvant CRT were analyzed on 10.5K cDNA microarrays. Response to treatment was assessed and correlated to gene expression patterns by using a support vector machine learning algorithm. Results: Complete clinical response at conclusion of CRT was achieved in 6 of 21 squamous cel..