The Worldwide Innovative Network in personalized cancer medicine consortium - WIN Consortium announces the publication of the Digital Display Precision Predictor: the prototype of a global biomarker model to guide treatments with targeted therapy and predict progression-free survival for cancer patients in NPJ Precision Oncology (10.1038/s41698-021-00171-6)
Precision oncology has led to approved, molecularly specific, biomarker-defined indications for targeted therapies. With the number of validated drug targets increasing, testing each patient's tumor for all markers related to all possible targeted therapies becomes infeasible due to limited amount of tissue usually obtained by biopsies. In addition, the current companion diagnostic approach used for most targeted therapies provides limited treatment options, with a binary "yes/no" expected response to a drug and no recommendation for which treatment, among a range of possible options, is likely to be the best option for a particular patient.
The Digital Display Precision Predictor (DDPP), is a biomarker strategy and tool able to predict the duration of progression-free survival (PFS) for multiple targeted treatments for patients with advanced/metastatic cancers, based on the comprehensive investigation of the whole transcriptome (the gene expression profile of the tumor compared to that of normal tissue).
DDPP is based on: 1) the exploration of the whole transcriptome (20,000 genes) providing insight about the status of activation of almost all drug targets in the context of the network of genes or pathways that drive tumor progression; 2) the data can be obtained from a single assessment requiring very small amounts of tumor and analogous normal tissues; and 3) the prediction of the duration of the time until tumor progression (PFS) under a specific therapeutic regimen.
"One of the main challenges of finding new biomarkers is that they are built in a relatively small number of patients treated with the same drug (from the WINTHER trial), for whom both molecular profiles (from tumor and analogous normal tissues) and PFS data were available," said Dr. Josep Tabernero, Vice-Chairman and Chairman of Scientific Advisory Board of WIN, Director, Vall d'Hebron Institute of Oncology, VHIO (Spain) and past ESMO President (2018-2019).
"The DDPP is potentially a new global biomarker tool that can apply to any type of cancer drug used alone or in combination, agnostic of tumor type, and can lead, pending further prospective validation, to a new approach to optimal treatment selection for patients with cancer," concluded Dr. Richard L. Schilsky, Chairman of WIN.
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About WIN Consortium
WIN Consortium is a non-profit association headquartered in France. The WIN network assembles 35 world-class academic medical centers, industries (pharmaceutical and diagnostic companies), research organizations and patient advocates spanning 19 countries and 4 continents, aligned to launch trials using its genomics and transcriptomics biomarker platform to bolster Precision Oncology across the world. WIN is the organizer of the WIN symposia in Precision Oncology.