Genetic predictors of benefit from adjuvant interferon for melanoma: understanding variation in tumour/host interaction

个体对癌症和治疗的反应可能与遗传的遗传变异和肿瘤中发生的遗传变化有关。干扰素治疗延长了黑色素瘤患者手术后无疾病复发的时间，但有许多副作用，目前我们无法预测谁会有反应或谁会出现副作用。基因改变可以用来帮助预测患者对干扰素的反应，我们的目标是识别这些改变。在利兹，我们将分析从干扰素临床试验患者身上提取的组织样本。我们将从这些样本中提取遗传物质，并识别遗传基因和肿瘤基因的遗传改变。利用干扰素试验已经收集的数据，我们将确定预测干扰素益处、干扰素副作用和黑色素瘤生存率的遗传改变。这些遗传因素的鉴定将有助于确定那些将从干扰素中获得整体益处的人，帮助临床医生和患者对治疗方案做出明智的选择，并将告诉我们更多关于人们的遗传特征如何与癌细胞相互作用。

It is likely that an individual‘s response to cancer and to treatment is linked to inherited genetic variation and genetic changes that occur in their tumour. Interferon therapy extends time without recurrence of disease after surgery for melanoma patients but has many side effects and currently we cannot predict who will respond or who will develop side effects. Genetic alterations could be used to help predict a patients‘ response to interferon and we aim to identify these alterations. In Leeds, we are going to analyse tissue samples removed from patients treated as part of clinical trials with interferon. We will extract genetic material from these samples and identify genetic alterations in both inherited and tumour genes. Using the data that has already been collected for the interferon trials, we will identify genetic alterations that predict benefit from interferon, side effects from interferon and survival in melanoma. Identification of these genetic factors will help identify those who will obtain an overall benefit from interferon helping clinicians and patients make informed choices about treatment options, and will tell us more about how people‘s inherited characteristics interact with cancer cells.