Background

In the 8MM (US, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK, Japan, and China), stage II and stage III combined represent the highest proportion of diagnosed incident cases of colorectal cancer (CRC). The standard treatment for early stages is surgical resection and adjuvant chemotherapy for high-risk patients. However, resistance of CRC to chemotherapy is the principal rationale for treatment failure and deciding on whether or not to treat stage II and stage III CRC patients with adjuvant chemotherapy is one the most challenging questions for clinical oncologists. Today, current clinical-pathologic stratification factors do not allow clear identification of these high-risk patients and there is still a crucial need to develop biomarkers that can identify patients who might benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy, in early stages.

Technology Overview

At the University of Luxembourg, researchers have identified Myosin5B, a prognostic and predictive biomarker in the CRC.

Myosin5B is highly expressed in epithelial cells of the gut and plays an important role in cell differentiation. Loss of Myosin5B might therefore be associated to cancer outcome as lack of cell differentation is a hallmark of the disease. The researchers have identified that Myosin5B is significantly reduced in CRC tumors. Using their own CRC cohort as well as public datasets on CRC the researchers identified Myosin5B expression to be associated with patient outcome. Early CRC patients with high expression of Myosin5B showed a better overall and disease-free survival compared to patients with low expression. Most importantly, a meta-analysis on various different CRC datasets unraveled that the expression of Myosin5B can predict the efficiency of chemotherapy in CRC patients. A simple qPCR-based test either on fresh frozen or on paraffin samples, as determined by these pre-analytical research, is perfectly suitable for the evaluation of Myosin5B expression. These findings might translate into a new prognostic and predictive biomarker for CRC patients in the future.

Further Details

Elisabeth Letellier et al. (2017) British Journal of Cancer 117, 1689–1701
Eric Koncina et al. (2020) International Review of Cell and Molecular Biology 356, 291–322
Eric Koncina et al. (2020) Cancers 12, 319

Benefits

Identification of patients at high-risk in stages II and III CRC
Improved prognostic and predictive accuracy
Prevent overtreatment with chemotherapy
Cost efficient and easy-to-use solution for CRC management

Applications

Diagnostic, CRC, stages II and III

Opportunity

The University of Luxembourg is willing to engage with a diagnostic partner to further develop and commercialize Myosin5B biomarker.

Myosin5B, a Prognostic and Predictive Marker for CRC Patients

Patents

IP Status

Seeking