The MED12 oncogene is essential in monitoring response to new cancer drugs, according to the study published in Cell and leaded by researchers at the IDIBELL and ICO in collaboration with researchers from the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI) in Amsterdam.

This research, published in Cell, has shown that MED12 oncogene plays a key role in controlling the response to different cancer drugs. To develop the study, the researchers used a preclinical model of lung with ALK translocation, very sensitive to crizotinib. This drug is a selective inhibitor of ALK fusion protein generated after translocation.

The research has been coordinated by the Colon Cancer clinical and research responsible at ICO-Hospitalet and Colorectal Cancer Group researcher at IDIBELL, Ramon Salazar, who was raised how to identify resistance mechanisms to critozinib. This work is collaboration with a research group of René Bernards, from the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI), who is an expert in interpreting the mechanisms of resistance to develop hypotheses and move to clinical trials of drug combinations.

The research confirmed a common action mechanism of inhibiting multidrug resistance of several pathways that result in ERK (extracellular signal regulated kinase). In the joint immuneprecipitation experiments was confirmed proteomic action in a posttranscriptional level and in the cytoplasm. Thus, as MED12KD is working, the expression of TGF-beta receptor on the membrane increases by reducing the co-precipitation of cytoplasm, a well known way of resistance of multiple receivers.