Transcriptomic biomarkers for predicting response to neoadjuvant treatment in oesophageal cancer

Anita Lavery, Richard Turkington

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)
74 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Oesophageal cancer is a devastating disease with poor outcomes and is the sixth leading cause of cancer death worldwide. In the setting of resectable disease, there is clear evidence that neoadjuvant chemotherapy and chemoradiotherapy result in improved survival. Disappointingly, only 15% to 30% of patients obtain a histopathological response to neoadjuvant therapy, often at the expense of significant toxicity. There are no predictive biomarkers in routine clinical use in this setting and the ability to stratify patients for treatment could dramatically improve outcomes. In this review, we outline current progress in evaluating predictive transcriptomic biomarkers for neoadjuvant therapy in oesophageal cancer and discuss the challenges facing biomarker development in this setting. We place these issues in the wider context of recommendations for biomarker development and reporting. The majority of studies focus on mRNA and microRNA biomarkers. These report a range of different genes involved in a wide variety of pathways and biological processes and this is explained to a large extent by the different platforms and analysis methods used. Many studies are also vastly underpowered and are therefore not suitable for identifying a candidate biomarker. Multiple molecular subtypes of oesophageal cancer have been proposed; however, little is known about how these relate to clinical outcomes. We anticipate that the accumulating wealth of genomic and transcriptomic data and clinical trial collaborations in the coming years will provide unique opportunities to stratify patients in this poor prognosis disease and recommend that future clinical trials incorporate well-designed retrospective and prospective biomarker development strategies.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)411-424
Number of pages14
JournalGastroenterology Report
Volume8
Issue number6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 08 Jan 2021

Keywords

  • oesophageal cancer
  • biomarker

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Oncology

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