Phosphocofilin: cofilin co-localization intensity as a predictor of metastatic recurrence

Abstract

Methods and products are provided for determining if a subject having a tumor is at risk of metastasis of the tumor. Specifically, the methods comprise detecting phosphorylated cofilin, and both phosphorylated and non-phosphorylated cofilin; quantifying the phosphorylated cofilin, and the total of phosphorylated and nonphosphorylated cofilin; and determining if a subject having the tumor is likely to experience metastasis of the tumor, based on the ratio of the amount of detected phosphorylated cofilin: total amount of phosphorylated and non-phosphorylated cofilin detected. Further disclosed are the types of tumor metastases that can be determined using the methods provided.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application claims benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 61 / 523,539, filed Aug. 15, 2011, the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference.STATEMENT OF GOVERNMENT SUPPORT[0002]This invention was made with government support under grant numbers CA100324 and CA150344 by the National Cancer Institute. The government has certain rights in the invention.SEQUENCE LISTING INCORPORATION[0003]The “.txt” Sequence Listing filed by EFS, and which is entitled 96700—1862_ST25.txt, is 2 kilobytes in size and was created on Jun. 25, 2012, is hereby incorporated by reference.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0004]Throughout this application various publications are referred to by number, or by author and year, in parentheses. Full citations for these references may be found at the end of the specification. The disclosures of these publications are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety into the subject application to more fully ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

This patent describes a way to help prevent a tumor from spreading to other parts of the body. This is done by giving a treatment to people who are likely to have the tumor come back.

Problems solved by technology

However, identification of metastatic risk is still a difficult task.

Breast cancer is one of the most frequent malignant neoplasms occurring in women in developed countries and metastasis of breast cancer is the main cause of death in these patients.

Currently, the prognosis in 70% of patients cannot be accurately determined resulting in the unnecessary treatment of many patients who will not benefit and may be injured by radiation and chemotherapy.

Such studies have identified gene sets, or “signatures”, the expression of which in primary tumors is associated with higher risk of metastasis and poor disease outcome for the patients.

However, these signatures, mostly built to act as a general prognostic tool for the clinic, gave little information about the molecular biology of the different cell types comprising the tumor tissue and little insight into the specific mechanisms of metastasis.

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