Patent ID: 8367340

Claim:
A method of predicting a response to drug-based therapy comprising; exposing cancer cells to at least one Histone Deacetylase Inhibitor (HDACi) drug and thereafter at least one anticancer drug; mixing (i) DNA extracted from said cancer cells, and (ii) a primer pair comprising a forward primer and a reverse primer that target a c-myc promoter sequence, wherein at least one of the primers comprises an oligonucleotide primer having at least 95% identity to a nucleotide sequence selected from the group consisting of SEQ ID NO: 1 and SEQ ID NO: 2; amplifying the DNA in a PCR Stop assay, under conditions to allow production of an amplicon; and quantifying an amount of accumulated PCR amplified product using real time PCR, wherein the amount of PCR amplified product is inversely proportional to incidence of DNA breaks in an amplified region.