In this retrospective study by Italian and Dutch researchers, mesothelioma samples from 99 patients treated with carboplatin and pemetrexed were analysed for markers of clinical outcome.
A low level of protein expression of thymidylate synthase (TS), the major folate-dependent enzyme inhibited by pemetrexed, correlated with improved outcome: better disease control, longer progression free survival and longer overall survival. In contrast, the level of protein expression of ECRR1, an excision repair gene associated with platin resistance in some tumors, did not. This study is the first to show that …