NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The National Cancer Institute is making two newly developed cancer biomarker technologies available for licensing, one for early diagnosis of ovarian cancer and one to predict patient response to chemotherapy.
The NCI’s Cell and Cancer Biology branch today issued details about the technology that addresses ovarian cancer, which it said is the fifth most common cancer in US women, and which killed more than 15,000 women in the US in 2006, making it three times more deadly than breast cancer.
NCI is making available for license a gene profile that is based on late-stage, high-grade papillary serous ovarian tumors, which is predictive of patient survival.
Another technology available for license is a gene signature that can predict whether a patient will respond positively to chemotherapy, show an initial response but will relapse without completing chemotherapy, or will not respond at all.
Applications for the technologies include rapid diagnostics and a tool that could be used to select appropriate treatments that may avoid patient exposure to negative side effects of chemotherapy.
NCI said the technology currently is in the pre-clinical development stage.
NCI's Cell and Cancer Biology branch also is seeking partners to further develop, evaluate, or commercialize a gene-expression profile that predicts ovarian cancer patient response to chemotherapy.