Post-treatment recovery of suboptimal DNA repair capacity and gene expression levels in colorectal cancer patients
2015
Abstract
DNA repair in blood cells was observed to be suboptimal in cancer patients at diagnosis, including colorectal cancer (CRC). To explore the causality of this phenomenon, we studied the dynamics of DNA repair from diagnosis to one-year follow-up, and with respect to CRC treatment.
Systemic CRC therapy is targeted to DNA damage induction and DNA repair is thus of interest. CRC patients were blood-sampled 3 times in 6-month intervals, starting at the diagnosis, and compared to healthy controls.
DNA repair was characterized by mRNA levels of 40 repair genes, by capacity of nucleotide excision repair (NER), and by levels of DNA strand breaks (SBs).