Here is fresh news: during the 9th World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancer in Barcelona Dr. Laura van ‘t Veer, co-founder and Chief Research Officer of Dutch genomic profiling company Agendia (which already offers MammaPrint and CupPrint gene expression profiling (GEP) tests), presented unpublished study data about developed robust gene expression signature that can predict the risk of colon cancer relapse and recurrence. The prognostic profile outperforms traditional clinicopathological risk assessment factors currently used by physicians to make treatment decisions [via].

“Our results show that the microarray gene expression profile we are now developing for colon cancer is able to identify stage II colon cancer patients who have a high risk of experiencing a recurrence of their disease within the next years. This may facilitate the identification of patients who would benefit most from adjuvant chemotherapy. The gene expression profile is currently being tested on further validation samples for translation into a high-throughput diagnostic test readily available for clinical practice.”

This new commercial ColoPrint test will be out early 2008 and is principally based on the same technology as recently FDA approved MammaPrint test and will be its follower. Meanwhile, California based GenomicHealth company has announced that it will move one of its research projects, a test to predict the likelihood of colon cancer recurrence, into full-scale clinical development and intends to follow a similar clinical development path as it did for its Oncotype DX breast cancer assay.

Note: The published literature on GEP tests primarily consists of validation studies to identify the optimal set of cancer-related genes. Also prospective clinical trials testing the utility of these techniques have yet to be reported, but there is no doubt that the use of gene microarrays or RT-PCR analysis of RNA will play an important role in providing information regarding prognostic and predictive characteristics of subsets of cancer patients [ref.].