Dr. Goldkorn on the Methods Used to Predict Chemotherapy Benefit in Bladder Cancer

Amir Goldkorn, MD, associate director, Translational Sciences, University of Southern California (USC) Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, associate professor of Medicine, the Keck School of Medicine of USC, discusses the methods utilized to predict chemotherapy benefit in bladder cancer.

In the phase 2 SWOG S1314 trial (NCT02177695), a program called coexpression extrapolation (COXEN) evaluated biomarkers to predict a patient's response to chemotherapy before surgery for bladder cancer.

This was a novel method to examine cell-free DNA methylation to predict which patients with bladder cancer would experience a benefit from chemotherapy, Goldkorn says. Blood samples were drawn from patients prior to the start of chemotherapy and following their first cycle of chemotherapy. Plasma was separated from the blood to study the cell-free DNA for methylation patterns, Goldkorn explains. 

The methylation pattern can tell clinicians the source of the cell-free DNA and how the tumor will respond to treatment, Goldkorn adds. By comparing methylation patterns vs pathologic response rates investigators were able to identify patterns to learn which patients benefited from chemotherapy, Goldkorn concludes.