Signal Genetics Announces Publication of Meta-Analysis of its Colon Cancer Test-Previstage™ GCC Confirming Prognostic Capabilities in Patients with Colon Cancer

NEW YORK, Jan. 23, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Signal Genetics, a privately held personalized medicine company focused on cancer, announced today the presentation of a paper entitled "Guanylyl Cyclase C (GCC) Lymph Nodes (LN) Classification as a Prognostic Marker in Patients with Stage II Colon Cancer: A Pooled Analysis" at the 2012 American Society of Clinical Oncology Gastrointestinal Cancer Symposium held in San Francisco, CA January 21, 2012.  The data from the paper demonstrate the value of implementing Previstage testing in patients with colorectal cancer to identify those patients at risk of relapse.

The paper is the culmination of the work conducted by a team of researchers and  collaborators from several  centers, including:  Rhode Island Hospital, Brown University, University of Massachusetts  Medical School, University of North Carolina, Lahey Clinic, Brigham and Women's Hospital, British Columbia Cancer Agency and DiagnoCure Inc.  These researchers conducted a pooled individual data analysis on 310 patients to confirm whether molecular detection of GCC in Lymph Nodes indicates high risk of disease recurrence and poor survival in untreated stage II colon cancer.

GCC is a colon-specific biomarker normally found in gastrointestinal epithelium whose expression is preserved in primary and metastatic colorectal cancer cells. Studies to date have suggested that the presence of GCC gene expression in lymph nodes increased the likelihood of disease recurrence in stage II colon cancer patients, independent of traditional high risk features. The results of this study suggest that detection of GCC mRNA in lymph nodes is associated with risk of disease recurrence in stage II colon cancer patients not treated with adjuvant chemotherapy.  These findings are consistent with several other studies conducted over the past 10 years.

Based on GCC levels, the estimated 5 year recurrence risks were 11% and 32% for the low and high risk groups respectively, clearly showing that GCC is a strong prognostic marker that effectively stratifies patients between those that are essentially cured from those at risk of disease recurrence. Higher detection levels of GCC in lymph nodes is also significantly associated with increased risk of all-cause mortality, disease-specific survival, and disease-free survival. 

According to Joe Hernandez, President and CEO of Signal Genetics, "This paper represents further validation of GCC as a strong prognostic test that provides physicians and their patients an important insight that helps them make critical treatment decisions." 

About Signal Genetics.
Signal Genetics, the parent company of Myeloma Health, Respira Health, and CC Health, is a privately held personalized medicine genetic testing company focused on bringing novel insights to physicians and their patients with various types of cancer.  The goal of Signal Genetics is to provide information regarding disease status, stage, odds of relapse, predicting response to therapy, and prognosis through an array of proprietary tools to help guide physicians to the optimal treatment for each individual patient. Additional information is available at www.signalgenetics.com.

SOURCE Signal Genetics