Grant funds research into chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy susceptibility
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Two Cleveland Clinic researchers received a multimillion-dollar grant to investigate biomarkers that may help predict which individuals with cancer are most likely to develop chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathic pain.
Daniel Rotroff, PhD, of the department of quantitative health sciences, and Joseph Foss, MD, of the Anesthesiology Institute, received the nearly $5 million grant from National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, part of the NIH.
“The ultimate utility of our study findings, we hope, will be to help physicians deliver more personalized therapies to patients living with cancer, and to improve patients’ quality of life during and after treatment,” Rotroff said in a press release.
Approximately 40% of patients treated with taxanes develop chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy. The painful condition — a common reason why patients receive reduced therapy courses — can persist after treatment stops.
The researchers will collect clinical outcomes data and blood samples from patients with breast cancer at different stages of taxane treatment. They will compare genetic, epigenetic and metabolic characteristics of patients who experience treatment-associated pain with those who do not.
They will use machine learning technology to develop algorithms that ultimately may be used to predict the likelihood that a patient will develop the condition.
The ability to predict which patients are most likely to experience this type of pain could allow clinicians to prescribe different doses of taxane treatments or use different therapeutic strategies that improve quality of life for patients while still ensuring efficacy.
“Having the ability to predict and measure chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathic pain will also provide a foundation for identifying new treatments for this challenging problem,” Foss said.
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