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Intellectual Property Office

A Diagnostic Test to Personalize Therapy Using Platinum-based Anticancer Drugs JIB-2441

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APPLICATIONS OF TECHNOLOGY:

  • Personalize therapy using platinum-based anticancer drugs

ADVANTAGES:

  • Can be used to tailor cancer treatments to individual patients
  • Reduces unnecessary cancer treatments and the associated side effects
  • Enables new therapeutic strategies for cancer

ABSTRACT:

Platinum-based anticancer drugs, such as the US approved drugs cisplatin, carboplatin, and oxaliplatin, are among the most active anticancer agents. These platinum compounds are known to bind to DNA and trigger cell cycle arrest and apoptosis of cancer cells. These drugs appear to have similar anticancer mechanism(s), but vary in their anticancer spectrum and toxicity. For example, oxaliplatin generally has comparable or superior anticancer activity but significantly lower nephrotoxicity compared to cisplatin. The drug is active against colorectal cancers, for which cisplatin and carboplatin are essentially clinically inactive. The clinical application of these platinum compounds, however, is still limited by their toxicity and chemoresistance. Thus, there remains a need for improved platinum-based anticancer therapies.

Researchers at Berkeley Lab and the University of California, San Francisco, have identified a class of proteins that play a critical role in the anticancer mechanism of oxaliplatin. Presence of these proteins increases the pharmacological effect of oxaliplatin, which can potentially lower the effective concentration to achieve equal or greater therapeutic effects with reduced systemic toxicity. Furthermore, this identified protein class would be good therapeutic targets to understand and prevent chemoresistance of oxaliplatin and other platinum-based drugs.

Diagnostic tests could be developed based on the identified protein class to personalize platinum-based therapy and predict prognosis. Diagnostic tests would allow doctors to determine:

1. What types of cancer will better respond to which class of platinum-based therapy, which is dependent on the expression or activity level of the protein in the tumor tissue.

2. Which patients, based on their genotype for the identified protein, will better respond to certain therapies, where patients with genetic mutations of the protein (resulting in reduced protein expression or activity) might display chemoresistance.

STATUS:

  • Patent pending. Available for licensing or collaborative research.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

This is a joint invention between Berkeley Lab and the University of California, San Franicsco. If you would like to receive further information about this technology and potential licensing opportunities, please contact:

Ha Nguyen at ngoc-ha.nguyen@ucsf.edu or Karin Immergluck at karin.immergluck@ucsf.edu

Zhang, S., Lovejoy, K. S., Shima, J. E., Lagpacan, L. L., Shu, Y., Lapuk, A., Chen, Y., Komori, T., Gray, J.W., Chen, X., Lippard, S. J., Giacomini, K. M., “Organic Cation Transporters are Determinants of Oxaliplatin Cytotoxicity,” Cancer Res., 66:17, 2006.

 

REFERENCE NUMBER: JIB-2441

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