Patent Evaluation: Molecular mechanisms involved in glioblastoma formation

Summary

Novelty: The gene for human epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) has been shown to be altered in many glioblastomas. The aberrant DNA, RNA and protein forms of the EGFR can be used as a tumour marker, used to assay the effects of therapy or as therapy guidelines to classify tumour types.

Biology: Patients with glioblastomas show amplification, overexpression and rearrangements of EGFR. An investigation using PCR to pull out the cDNA and unbalanced PCR to sequence the DNA is described here. The findings indicate that the gene for EGFR is amplified in just over 50% of tumours. The amplified gene shows structural abnormalities in 43% of the cases. Twenty-two different primers are claimed for the PCR based diagnosis of aberrant EGFR; the cDNA sequences of the aberrant EGFRs are also claimed as are monoclonal antibodies which recognize mutant EGFR proteins.