Studies on Type-1 Insulin-like Growth Factor and on reduced folate in cancer

Insulin-like growth factor-1 receptor (IGF-1R) plays a critical role in regulating cancer cell proliferation, survival and metastasis in the transformed cell. Additionally, chemo-resistance acquisition, a cumbersome problem in advanced colorectal cancer (ACRC) patients. The mechanism of resistance acquisition is found to be attributed to a p-IGF-1R membrane-to-nuclear internalization that cannot be overcome with existing IGF-1R inhibitors. In the present study, intriguingly 48% of cases were positive for p-IGF-1R. p-IGF-1R positive cases had different patterns of staining: peri- nuclear detected in 76%, 11% with nuclear localization and only 13% membrane-apical staining. Furthermore, Tumours with positive p-IGF-1R expression, had higher MMP7 co-expression (59%) compared with negative cases 13%. These findings not only indicate that, IGF-1R could be used as biomarker, but also could allow selection of ACRC patients who can benefit from anti-IGF-1R treatment.