Background: Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) accounts for eighty five percent of lung cancer cases. Among drugs most commonly used are platinum-based chemotherapy as cisplatin and carboplatin & 3rd generation chemotherapy. Excision Repair Cross Complementing Group 1 (ERCC1) Gene is one of members of nucleotide excision repair pathway. It causes inhibition in the action produced by platinum and third generation chemotherapy. So, the produced DNA repair will be resistance to these drugs. Single nucleotide polymorphism in ERCC1 impairs this function and this may help in prediction of response to platinum-based chemotherapy.
Aim of the Work: This work aimed to study association among single nucleotide polymorphism of ERCC1 rs11615 in studied cases with non-small cell lung cancer and the response to platinum-based chemotherapy as to reduce exposure of chemotherapy side effect.
Materials & Methods: research was done on 50 NSCLC patients. Thirty of them were non-responders to platinum-based chemotherapy & other 20 were responders based on RECIST criteria. Detection of the ERCC1 (T/C) polymorphism by real-time PCR was done for all patients' groups.
Results: In responders' group, 19 patients (95%) had wild type homozygous CC genotype & 1patient (5%) had heterozygous TC genotype. In non-responders' group, 29 patients (96.7%) had wild type homozygous CC genotype and one patient (3.3%) had TC genotypes. There was no significant statistical variation observed among responders' & non-responders' groups regarding genotype frequencies (= 0.8, p>0.05).
Conclusion: Our findings did not support existence of significant link among ERCC1 rs 11615 polymorphism & response to platinum-based chemotherapy in advanced cases of NSCLC.