Patent ID: 7867775

Claim:
A method of determining whether a head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) patient is likely to benefit from treatment with a drug targeting the EGFR pathway, comprising the steps of: a) obtaining a mass spectrum from a blood-based sample from the HNSCC patient; b) performing one or more predefined pre-processing steps on the mass spectrum obtained in step a); c) obtaining integrated intensity values of selected features in said spectrum at one or more predefined m/z ranges after the pre-processing steps on the mass spectrum in step b) have been performed; and d) using the values obtained in step c) in a classification algorithm using a training set comprising class-labeled spectra produced from blood-based samples from other cancer patients to identify the HNSCC patient as being either likely or not likely to benefit from treatment with the said drug; wherein the drug targeting the EGFR pathway is selected from the group of drugs consisting of a small molecule epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor and a monoclonal antibody epidermal growth factor receptor inhibitor.