2012 UALC
Darren Tyson, PhD
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Research Project:
Variability of erlotinib response in lung cancer
Summary:
Patients whose tumors have known driver mutations generally respond well to targeted therapies, such as erlotinib or crizotinib, although the durability of response is highly variable from patient to patient. Knowing in advance which tumors will progress most rapidly would indicate which patients should be treated more aggressively. Currently there is no way to predict tumor response, necessitating a “wait and see” approach. Dr. Tyson will be using a novel method to characterize this variability in response to erlotinib, using a novel assay and a predictive model. If successful, this work could have significant impact on how patients are treated, enabling doctors to predict which patients will or will not respond to current and future targeted therapies.