ERCC-1 gene expression levels and outcome to FOLFOX chemotherapy in patients enrolled in CONFIRM1 and CONFIRM2

4131 Background: ERCC-1 is a nucleotide excision repair gene associated with DNA repair of DNA adducts induced by platinum based chemotherapy. ERCC-1 mRNA levels have been shown to predict outcome in patients with NSCLC, gastric, bladder and ovarian cancer when treated with platinum based chemotherapy. We tested whether ERCC-1 gene expression is associated with outcome in patients with metastatic colon cancer treated with FOLFOX in first and second line treatment with or without PTK/ZK Methods: 191 formalin fixed paraffin embedded (FFPE) tumor samples from patients enrolled in CONFIRM 1 and CONFIRM2 were analyzed. 85 patients from CONFIRM1 (42 pts treated with FOLFOX, 43 pts with FOLFOX/PTK/ZK) and 106 from CONFIRM2 (54 pts treated with FOLFOX, 52 with FOLFOX/PTK/ZK). FFPE tissues were dissected using laser-captured microdissection and analyzed for ERCC-1 mRNA expression using a quantitative real-time RT-PCR method. Gene expression values (relative mRNA levels) are expressed as ratios between the target g...