Comprehensive characterization of individual patients' tumour is important to realize
personalized medicine. Here, we investigate to identify subsets that benefit from
capecitabine plus
RAD001 in advanced
gastric cancer (GC) patients by comprehensive high-throughput genomic analysis (nCounter assay). Archival tumour tissue blocks, if possible, were collected at phase II trial of
capecitabine plus
RAD001 in 47 refractory GC patients (at clinicaltrials.gov NCT#01099527). A total of 42
formalin-fixed,
paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tumour samples were available for nanostring based-multigene Assay. An nCounter assay of 519
kinase panels has been used. We performed correlation analyses between expression levels of
kinase genes and response for
capecitabine plus
RAD001. Among 42 patients with An nCounter assay of 519
kinase panels, 4 patients achieved confirmed partial response and 15 patients revealed stable disease, resulting in an overall response rate (ORR) of 9.5%. No difference in ORR was observed in terms of gender, performance status, primary tumour site, gastric resection, histologic subtype, Lauren classification, No. of metastatic site and No. of
chemotherapy. In subgroups with response for
capecitabine plus
RAD001, there is significant overexpression of 6 genes among 519
kinase gene such as EPHA2 (P = 0.0025), PIM1 (P = 0.0031), KSR1 (P = 0.0033), and EIF2AK4 (P = 0.0046) that are related to the activation of mTOR signalling. This study is first report that investigated to identify
biomarkers predictive of the response for
RAD001 containing treatment in refractory GC patients, by comprehensive high-throughput genomic analysis (nCounter assay).