Functional genomic identification of predictive biomarkers of everolimus sensitivity and of new molecular targets in ren

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Everolimus is an effective new drug for the treatment of kidney cancer, however not all patients respond to everolimus and even those who respond develop resistance after 6-9 months of treatment. We will use a technique called ‘functional genomics‘ to de-activate each of the 21.000 human genes individually in kidney cancer cells grown in the laboratory, to identify genes that can lead to everolimus resistance. Resistance genes will be further studies to understand how resistance develops and how it can be prevented or treated. We will also analyse kidney cancer samples from patients treated with everolimus to determine whether the identified resistance genes are commonly altered in resistant cancers. This should lead to the development of a test that can determine whether a patient with kidney cancer is likely to respond to everolimus before treatment is actually started. Such a test would spare patients with resistant disease the side effects of the treatment and improve their quality of life. Everolimus is not approved for the use in the NHS because of the high costs. A test that allows targeting the drug to patients with sensitive disease would reduce overall costs and hopefully make it available to NHS patients.