Improving Colorectal Cancer Treatment

Called clusterin, this protein has been linked to the development of tumor cells and resistance to cancer therapy, but how it works is not well understood. Pending questions include how this protein is expressed in normal and cancer cells, how it helps cancer cells escape ionizing radiation and chemotherapy, and which patients will benefit from treatment with a drug targeting clusterin.

Claus Lindbjerg Andersen, Torben Falck Orntoft, and colleagues discovered that clusterin is not expressed in normal cells, while in 25 percent of colorectal tumors, the cancer cells contained clusterin. They also showed that the protein is actually made by the cancer cells themselves. These new findings should help improve current therapies against colorectal cancer, especially for patients with tumors producing clusterin, the scientists concluded.

Article: "Clusterin Expression in Normal Mucosa and Colorectal Cancer," by Claus Lindbjerg Andersen, Troels Schepeler, Kasper Thorsen, Karin Birkenkamp-Demtroder, Francisco Mansilla, Lauri A. Aaltonen, Søren Laurberg and Torben Falck Orntoft