Editorial
At last, a predictive and prognostic marker for radiotherapy?
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* Corresponding author: Alastair M Thompson a.m.thompson@dundee.ac.uk
1 Dundee Cancer Centre, Ninewells Hospital and Medical School and University of Dundee, Dundee DD1 9SY, UK
2 Department of Surgical Oncology, MD Anderson Cancer Center, 1400 Holcombe Boulevard, Houston, Texas 77030, USA
Breast Cancer Research 2010, 12:106 doi:10.1186/bcr2567
See related research by Hu et al., http://breast-cancer-research.com/content/12/2/R18
Published: 11 May 2010Abstract
Holliday junction recognition protein (HJURP) levels in breast cancer associate with both poor prognosis and an increased sensitivity to irradiation. Whilst, in part, this could be explained in relation to proliferation, it would not entirely account for the association with sensitivity to radiation. Thus, HJURP may have clinical potential as a marker of prognosis and radiation sensitivity; further validation with tissues from randomised controlled trials is needed. HJURP may represent the first in a class of proteins with roles in chromosome segregation and DNA repair that act as predictive biomarkers.