Signal Genetics will present the paper "Guanylyl Cyclase C (GCC) Lymph Nodes (LN) Classification as a Prognostic Marker in Patients with Stage II Colon Cancer: A Pooled Analysis" at the 2012 American Society of Clinical Oncology Gastrointestinal Cancer Symposium held in San Francisco on January 21, 2012. The data from the paper demonstrate the value of implementing Previstage testing in patients with colorectal cancer to identify those patients at risk of relapse.

The paper is the culmination of the work conducted by a team of researchers and collaborators from several centers, including: Rhode Island Hospital, Brown University, University of Massachusetts Medical School, University of North Carolina, Lahey Clinic, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, British Columbia Cancer Agency, and DiagnoCure Inc. These researchers conducted a pooled individual data analysis on 310 patients to confirm whether molecular detection of GCC in lymph nodes indicates high risk of disease recurrence and poor survival in untreated stage II colon cancer.

GCC is a colon-specific biomarker normally found in gastrointestinal epithelium whose expression is preserved in primary and metastatic colorectal cancer cells. Studies to date have suggested that the presence of GCC gene expression in lymph nodes increased the likelihood of disease recurrence in stage II colon cancer patients, independent of traditional high-risk features. The results of this study suggest that detection of GCC mRNA in lymph nodes is associated with risk of disease recurrence in stage II colon cancer patients not treated with adjuvant chemotherapy. These findings are consistent with several other studies conducted over the past 10 years.

Based on GCC levels, the estimated 5-year recurrence risks were 11% and 32% for the low- and high-risk groups respectively, clearly showing that GCC is a strong prognostic marker that effectively stratifies patients between those that are essentially cured from those at risk of disease recurrence. Higher detection levels of GCC in lymph nodes is also significantly associated with increased risk of all-cause mortality, disease-specific survival, and disease-free survival.

Source: Signal Genetics