A fresh look at existing therapies: Researchers explore ways to teach approved drugs ...(n an immunocompromised mouse fail to acc...),Health

The idea is to use a window of opportunity not traditionally explored to examine therapeutic biomarkers, and to identify subpopulations of patients who will derive a predictable higher likelihood of response from a given agent that is now available, Dr. Rathmell said. Patients proceed to surgery regardless of the response to the very short course of treatment.

Due to scheduling constraints, the following presenter will not be available for the press briefing. Dr. Antonio Jimeno will be available for interviews with reporters from 1 p.m to 3 p.m. PST and again from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m PST on Wednesday, October 24.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center working in preclinical models of pancreatic cancer have found a way to identify those patients most likely to benefit from Tarceva (erlotinib), which has been approved for use in the disease but whose overall efficacy they seek to improve. Using a gene-expression-based tool to look for pathways involved in pancreatic cancer, they matched response to Tarceva to activation of the EGFR pathway which the drug targets.

Identifying the subset of patients that benefits the most from Tarceva is a priority, and this method appears to offer us a way to do that, said Antonio Jimeno M.D, Ph.D., a researcher in the Gastrointestinal Cancer Program at Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Of course this is preliminary preclinical data, but the model we used is based on direct patient xenografts and not cell lines, and we have reasons to believe this system is more r
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