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Selecting Patients with Advanced NSCLC for Chemo

JAMA Oncol; ePub 2017 Nov 1; Shen, Chang, et al

Publish date:: November 7, 2017

Certain small metabolites could serve as useful biomarkers to help select ideal candidates for platinum-based chemotherapy in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to a study involving 220 individuals. Participants had advanced-stage NSCLC with either poor (n=110) or good survival (n=110). Investigators performed metabolomic profiling and then looked at the link between certain metabolites and survival during discovery and validation phases. Among the results:

The levels of caffeine, paraxanthine, stachydrine, and methyl glucopyranoside (alpha + beta) metabolites were substantially different between patients with poor and good survival during both discovery and validation.
Increased levels of the 4 metabolites were significantly linked with good survival in both discovery and validation phases.
Strong cumulative effects on overall survival were also seen.

Citation:

Shen J, Chang D, Huang M, et al. Circulating metabolite profiles to predict overall survival in advanced non-small cell lung cancer patients receiving first-line chemotherapy. [Published online ahead of print November 1, 2017]. JAMA Oncol. doi:10.1016/j.lungcan.2017.10.018.

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