Prospective Study for the Validation of the Genetic Signature 354849 to Predict the Response to Standard Treatment in Patients With Locally Advanced Cervical Cancer

There are several studies of genes or genetic signatures associated with the response to treatment in cervical cancer, but so far it has not been possible to standardize the use of any biomarker or biomarker signature as a predictor of the response to treatment with reproducible results. Therefore, there is still a need to develop an effective method to predict the response to chemo-radiotherapy in locally advanced cervical cancer. This prospective study included 189 patients with cervical cancer clinical stages IB2-IVA, without previous treatment.

Tumor samples will be obtained at the confirmatory diagnostic biopsy. All samples will be processed by the pathology laboratory as usual. The RNA will be extracted from the paraffin blocks with the RNeasy FFPE Kit (Qiagen) according to the manufacturer's recommendations. The RNA will be stored at -20°C until use. Quantitative PCR (qPCR) will be performed with the kit High-Capacity cDNA Reverse transcription Kit (Thermo Fisher Scientific). Primers for the 27 genes will be developed. The relative expression will be calculated using the 2- ΔΔCt method, using the expression of β-actin as a normalizing gene.

In order to obtain the prognostic score, the score assigned by the classifier for the sample will be calculated from the 2-ΔΔCt values obtained for each gene. This will be done by a computer-readable medium containing the type expression profiles related to a good and a bad response to the standard treatment.