ERCC1 and the Prognosis for Patients With Colon Cancer

Oxaliplatin is known to be a platinum-based chemotherapeutic agent that carries a 1, 2-diamino-cyclohexane ring. This drug has shown in vitro and in vivo antitumor activities in patients with colorectal cancer (CRC) [1]. The addition of oxaliplatin to 5FU (FOLFOX regimen) was shown to improve the adjuvant treatment of stage-III colon cancer by reducing the risk of recurrence and in-creasing overall survival [2, 3]. Oxaliplatin exerts its action by forming DNA-platinum mono-adducts, primarily with guanines. Oxaliplatin also inhibits DNA replication and transcription and induces apoptosis [1]. Generally, oxaliplatin-induced adducts are not recognized by the mismatch repair system, but are repaired by the nucleotide excision repair and base excision repair pathways [4, 5]. An enhanced DNA repair efficiency may contribute to a resis-tance to platinum-based cytotoxic drugs. Several studies have demonstrated that single nucleotide polymorphisms involved i