Analysis of samples from the PETACC 8 phase III clinical trial shows that the level of miR-31 expression identifies sub-populations of stage III colon cancer patients who have benefited from the addition of cetuximab to FOLFOX adjuvant chemotherapy.

IntegraGen today announced the presentation of results on miR-31 microRNA at the annual conference of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) in Munich. The study, entitled "miR-31 as a prognostic and predictive marker of disease-free survival (DFS) in resected stage III colon cancer: a retrospective analysis of the PETACC-8 trial," (link) is based on the analysis of tumor samples collected from more than 1n400 patients included in the prospective clinical trial PETACC-8 Phase III.

The main results relate in particular to :

• The fact that miR-31-3p and miR-31-5p expression are prognostic of progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) in several subpopulations of phase III colon cancer patients.
• That the expression level of miR-31-3p and miR-31-5p identifies patients who have benefited from the addition of cetuximab to FOLFOX adjuvant chemotherapy.
• And that the level of expression of miR-31-5p specifically is predictive of cetuximab efficacy in three distinct subpopulations among the patients included in the study.

 "These results provide further evidence of the marker's ability to predict response to cetuximab therapy in colorectal cancer patients" Séverine Martin-Lannerée, PhD, R&D project leader at IntegraGen and co-author of the study. "While all our previous studies focused on patients with metastatic colon cancer, this new study demonstrates that a low level of expression of the marker allows us to identify patients in earlier, non-metastatic phases who have benefited from the addition of cetuximab to adjuvant chemotherapy, which could potentially broaden the biomarker's clinical applications."