Molecular profiles as predictive marker for the effect of overall treatment time of radiotherapy in supraglottic larynx squamous cell carcinomas

Background and purpose: Reduction of the overall treatment time of radiotherapy increases the probability of local tumour control, but it does not benefit all patients. Identification of molecular marker profiles may aid in the selection of patients likely to benefit from accelerated radiotherapy. Patients and methods: Two hundred and nine patients with SCC of the supraglottic larynx received primary radiotherapy in the randomised DAHANCA trials to 66-68 Gy, 2 Gy/fx but with different overall treatment times of 9.5 week, 6.5 week and 5.5 week. Formalin-fixed paraffin embedded tumour slides were assessed by immunohistochemistry for expression of EGFr, E-cadherin, KI-67 and Bcl-2 and the TP53 mutation profile was determined using PCR-amplification, DHPLC and sequencing. The profiles were established using a hierarchical clustering algorithm with a Bayesian information criterion for cluster number optimisation. Results: Full data-set were available for 158 patients and four almost equally sized clusters were identified. One of these clusters differed significantly with respect to local control compared to the other clusters: the cluster (n = 36) characterised by wild type TP53, low expression of E-cadherin and Bcl-2, moderate KI-67 and EGFr, was not influenced by a reduction in the overall treatment time (P=0.6) whereas the other clusters showed an increase in local control when the overall treatment time of radiotherapy was reduced. This was also partially seen with disease specific survival as the endpoint. Conclusions: Molecular marker profiling may aid in the selection of patients that will benefit of a reduction in overall treatment time of radiotherapy in SCC of the supraglottic larynx. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.