Patent ID: 8586311

Claim:
A method of treating a tumor with a chemotherapeutic regimen comprising: (a) isolating mRNA from a fixed tumor tissue sample; (b) subjecting the mRNA to reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) amplification using (i) a pair of oligonucleotide primers capable of amplifying a region of the Excision Repair Cross-Complementing (ERCC1) gene, and (ii) a pair of oligonucleotide primers capable of amplifying a region of the Thymidylate Synthase (TS) gene, to obtain an ERCC1 and a TS amplified sample; (c) determining the levels of TS and ERCC1 mRNA expression in the amplified samples relative to the level of mRNA expression of an internal control gene; and (d) treating the tumor with a chemotherapeutic regimen comprising (i) a platinum-based genotoxic agent when the determined level of ERCC1 mRNA expression is below a predetermined threshold value; and/or (ii) a fluorouracil-based therapeutic when the determined level of TS mRNA expression is below a predetermined threshold value.