TK1 measurements in serum correlate with the treatment response in breast cancer patients
AroCell AB today announces that a new peer-reviewed article has been published in the journal BMC Cancer, part of Springer Nature. In women undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer, serum levels of the protein thymidine kinase 1 (TK1), measured early during treatment using AroCell TK 210 ELISA, showed a significant correlation with the response to treatment established at surgery after six cycles of treatment.
Early evaluation of tumor response would facilitate individualized treatment, with inefficient chemotherapy interrupted or changed. In the present PROMIX study, measurements of the serum level of TK1 (sTK1) were performed in patients receiving treatment with Epirubicin and Docetaxel before surgery. The cell loss metric, defined as the ratio between sTK1 and tumor volume, obtained after two treatment cycles, correlated significantly with the status of the tumor at surgery after six cycles. This indicates that the use of the sTK1-based metric gives an early indication of the treatment response in breast cancer.
The study was performed on serum from 104 patients with newly detected, localized breast cancer in a neoadjuvant Phase II trial. Serum samples had been obtained before, and 48 hours after, each cycle of chemotherapy. The concentration of TK1 in the serum was measured using the AroCell TK 210 ELISA.
The results of the study lead to the conclusion that TK1 has the potential of being used as a biomarker for early treatment response in patients with breast cancer.
“This study tells us that TK1 can be of great value in modern precision medicine. The results also support AroCell’s focus on monitoring breast cancer treatment.” says professor Claes Post, Chairman of the Board of AroCell.
“We are pleased with these exciting results. Early detection of therapy response is crucial in selecting the correct treatment for every individual patient” says Michael Brobjer, CEO. “The implication of this finding is that it could aid to avoid patients undergoing chemotherapy treatment to which they may not respond”. Michael continues.
“The large differences between patients in the response to cytotoxic treatment, combined with the costs and suffering of such treatment, warrant the development of methods for early evaluation of the response in each individual. The correlation between an early sTK1-based measure of cell loss and the outcome of treatment four months later suggests that the metric is a manifestation of an important biological tumour property, a property that may differ considerably between patients but is comparatively stable in the individual.”, says Bernhard Tribukait, author of the article.