Thursday, June 5, 2025
6/5/2025
HAIR FOLLICLE ASSAY TO MONITOR TARGETED CANCER THERAPY - DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Personalized medicine is a new clinical pardigm where a specific cancer therapeutic is prescribed based upon the individual biology of the patient. For example, specific receptor tyrosine kinase (rTK) inhibitors may be chosen based on the proteomic profile of the patient. The long-term goal of this proposal is to increase the efficacy of targeted therapy with rTK inhibitors in cancer patients by monitoring the systemic response of patients to the drug dudng the course of therapy. Since most of the rTK inhibitors are effective in only 10-20% of patients, tailoring the dose of the drug to each individual patient or replacing a drug with low efficacy in a particular patient may improve overall survival. We propose to develop a non-invasive diagnostic tool for monitoring cancer patients that are being treated with inhibitors of rTK by monitoring activity of the target receptors VEGFr, EGFr, PDGFr, and c-Kit proteins in hair follicles using Layered Expression Scanning (LES) technology. LES technology is based on novel layered membranes. This tool would be used to measure systemic response to the drug in order to adjust the time and dosage of the drug and to determine whether a patient has developed systemic resistance to the drug. Additionally, since one rTK inhibitor often affects multiple receptors, LES would provide the important ability to simultaneously measure the activity of a drug on multiple receptors. The use of hair follicles has the following advantages: samples are easily accessible, follicles contain rapidly dividing cells that are highly susceptible to agents affecting cell growth, and hair follicles have been shown to respond to treatment with inhibitors of rTK. In the Phase I studies we will test the ability of LES technology to reproducibly detect proteins in hair follicles and to quantitate changes in the amount and activity of VEGFr, EGFr, PDGFr, and c-Kit proteins in the Follide. By the end of the Phase I we will use results of our research to assemble a prototype diagnostic kit.
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