ASO Author Reflections: Biomarkers for Neoadjuvant Chemoradiation Therapy in Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Excerpt

Chemoradiation therapy (CRT) can be a definite treatment for unresectable tumors, but, on the other hand, is also a useful therapy before surgery for potentially resectable tumors.1 The most important fact is that esophageal cancer patients who respond to CRT survive longer than other patients, therefore it would be useful to preselect responders. We previously reviewed the literature available on biological and molecular predictive factors in ESCC patients treated with neoadjuvant CRT and defined several molecular categories that correlated with response and/or prognosis, i.e., tumor suppressors, cell cycle regulators, DNA repair molecules, drug-resistance proteins, angiogenic factors, molecules involved in cell proliferation/invasion/metastasis, and hedgehog signaling molecules.2 This retrospective study was designed to examine the expression of representative molecules from the above categories as candidate biomarker proteins in biopsy specimens of ESCC, and to evaluate whether such expression is associated with response to neoadjuvant CRT. …