Department of Oncology and Radiotherapy, Medical School and Teaching Hospital in Pilsen, Charles University in Prague, Pilsen, Czech Republic fiala.o@centrum.cz.
2014-9-10; doi:
Tumor biomarkers are used for diagnostics and follow-up monitoring of patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). We focused on the predictive role of neuron-specific enolase (NSE) and thimidine kinase (TK) in patients with advanced-stage NSCLC treated with epidermal growth factor tyrosine kinase inhibitors (EGFR-TKIs).
In a total of 163 patients with advanced-stage (IIIB or IV) NSCLC treated with EGFR-TKIs (erlotinib or gefitinib), pre-treatment levels of NSE and TK were measured.
We observed significantly shorter progression-free (PFS) and overall survival (OS) in patients with high NSE levels (p=0.002; p=0.003) and also in those with high TK levels (p=0.026; p=0.020). The multivariate Cox proportional hazards model confirmed that high NSE is a strong independent predictive factor for short PFS (hazard ratio; HR=2.36; p=0.003).
High pre-treatment serum levels of NSE is an independent biomarker predicting poor outcome of patients with NSCLC treated with EGFR-TKIs.
Copyright© 2014 International Institute of Anticancer Research (Dr. John G. Delinassios), All rights reserved.
PMID:25202114
