A team of researchers from the University of Colorado led by Tyler Robin, PhD, Department of OB/GYN, Denver Anschutz Medical Campus, has discovered a new biomarker in Ewing’s sarcoma that explains the lack of disease response to current chemotherapy in some patients with this cancer, who until now have had a very poor prognosis. The identification of EYA3 protein as a novel biomarker—a mediator of chemoresistance—in Ewing’s sarcoma explains the mechanism of EYA3 overexpression as the culprit in the resistance to chemotherapy in this disease. This discovery will be used to direct therapy, by identifying patients with elevated EYA3 levels to either reduce the protein levels directly or to intervene in the EYA3 overproduction process. “First, levels of EYA3 could be a tool in offering accurate prognosis and choosing how aggressively to treat Ewing’s sarcoma, and, second, we hope that by lowering levels of EYA3, we could help increase the effectiveness of existing therapies for Ewing’s sarcoma,” Dr Robin noted. Furthermore, this new understanding will likely lead to the development of new therapies, according to coinvestigator Heide Ford, PhD. “Our next step is to test small-molecule inhibitors against EYA3 to determine which inhibitors best sensitize Ewing’s sarcomas to chemotherapy,” she said. Colorado Cancer Blogs; June 29, 2012
