Quoted from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120829141809.htm

Malignant Mesothelioma Patients Likely to Benefit from Drug Pemetrexed Identified, Study Suggests

ScienceDaily (Aug. 29, 2012) — Previous studies have hypothesized that low levels of the enzyme thymidylate synthase (TS) likely mark patients who will benefit from the drug pemetrexed — but results have been inconclusive at best and at times contradictory.

A University of Colorado Cancer Center study recently published in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology provides an explanation of why: only in combination with high levels of a second enzyme, FPGS, does low TS predict response to pemetrexed in patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma.

“The hope is that oncologists could test a patient for TS and FPGS levels and so discover if the patient should be treated with pemetrexed or if another therapy might be more appropriate,” says the paper’s first author, Daniel C. Christoph, MD, PhD, medical oncologist at the West German Cancer Center, working as an international postdoctoral researcher in the lab of CU Cancer Center investigator, Fred Hirsch, MD, PhD.

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