Plasma RNA being used to monitor cancer treatment

Editor's Note 

According to a May 2022 study from UCLA Health, liquid biopsies for certain cancers are becoming more popular because they are less invasive, Healthcare Purchasing News July 18 reports. This method can be used to monitor cancer treatment and accurately evaluate effectiveness.

In this study, UCLA researchers studied the efficacy of APG-157, a botanical drug, on head and neck cancer (HNC) patients. The plasma of 10 patients was collected in Phase 1 of the trial: six with HNC and four healthy patients who took APG-157, a capsule containing curcumin, a substance in turmeric.  According to Eri S. Srivatsan, PhD, one of the authors of a paper published in the journal Cancer in April 2020, APG-157 has a therapeutic effect in HNC patients undergoing immunotherapy because “APG-157 brings immune cells into the tumor micro-environment.”

The findings revealed that using RNA, rather than the more tradition method with DNA, in blood plasma may be an effective biomarker of patient response to APG-157. Matteo Pellegrini, PhD, said “Sequencing RNA from plasma is fraught with difficulty, because RNA degrades very easily. It is not a stable molecule, and also there are minute amounts in the plasma.”

Significant changes were detected in the plasma RNA samples following the APG-157 treatment, the authors wrote. “These could be interpreted from a mechanistic perspective as part of the response to the therapy, which included changes in the immune response as the immune system began to attack the tumor,” Pellegrini added.