Founded in 1961, the Center Antoine Lacassagne is one of the 18 Cancer Centers in the UNICANCER network in France. The Center's missions include cancer care, research and teaching. It is a private, not-for-profit establishment that treats all types of cancer and receives over 6,400 patients a year.

The international FUSAFE-2 study is one of the research projects conducted by the Centre Antoine Lacassagne. The study, entitled Searching for a multi-gene signature to secure fluoropyrimidine-based chemotherapies in colorectal cancer "funded by the French Ministry of Health (PRT-K) and supported by IntegraGen.

Fluoropyrimidines (FPs), 5fluorouracil and its oral prodrug capecitabine, are the most widely prescribed conventional chemotherapies for solid tumors, with around 77,000 cancer patients receiving FP-based chemotherapy every year in France. However, FPs can induce severe toxicities, up to and including death in some patients (Le Guellec C et al. Annals of Oncology 2019). European health authorities currently recommend pre-therapeutic screening for DPD deficiency (mandatory in France) to identify patients likely to develop severe FP-related toxicities.

The aim of the FUSAFE-2 meta-analysis is to identify new genetic markers predictive of very severe FP toxicities, in order to improve the sensitivity of currently recommended genetic tests, and to introduce in the near future a high-performance, easy-to-perform genetic test that would help clinicians detect patients at risk of developing very severe toxicities on FP, in order to adapt their treatment.

"The FUSAFE-2 study involves a very large population of 3,500 colorectal cancer patients treated with FP-based chemotherapy. Germline DNA sequencing, extracted from blood samples, was carried out by IntegraGen, an OncoDNA company specializing in genomic services and sequenced data analysis. Despite the large volume of samples, IntegraGen successfully completed its part of the project within the allotted time. We were impressed by the professionalism of the teams, their services and the performance of their processes, including the data quality process, which includes identity-vigilance checks". said project coordinator Dr Marie-Christine Etienne-Grimaldi, Head of the Oncopharmacology Laboratory at the Centre Antoine Lacassagne, Nice, France.

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