Dr. Rugo on Proliferation as an Anti-Angiogenesis Marker

Hope S. Rugo, MD, clinical professor, Department of Medicine (Hematology/Oncology); and Director, Breast Oncology Clinical Trials Program, University of California, San Francisco, discusses the idea of using proliferation as a marker to predict response to angiogenesis inhibitors.

Rugo uses the investigation of PARP inhibitors such as iniparib in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) as an example of how hard it is to find a single marker that predict response in breast cancer.

The trials investigating PARP discovered that TNBC is a very heterogeneous disease that contains multiple intrinsic subtypes. Using only immunohistochemistry criteria to predict response to anti-angiogenesis will not work because of tumor heterogeneity.