Preliminary study on the Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) of XRCC1 gene identification to improve the outcomes of radiotherapy for cervical cancer

Cervical cancer is the most fatal disease among Indonesian women. In recognition of the substantial variation in the intrinsic response of individuals to radiation, an effort had been done to identify the genetic markers, primarily Single Nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), which are associated with responsiveness of cancer cells to radiation therapy. One of these SNPs is X-ray repair cross-complementing protein 1 (XRCC1) that is one of the most important genes in deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) repair pathways. Meta-analysis in the determination of the association of XRCC1 polymorphisms with cervical cancer revealed the potential role of XRCC1 polymorphisms in predicting cell response to radiotherapy.Our preliminary study with real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) showed that radiotherapy affected the XRCC1 gene analyzed in blood of cervical cancer patient. Other published study found three SNPs of XRCC1 (Arg194Trp, Arg280His, and Arg399Gln) that cause amino acid substitutions. Arg194Trp is only SNPs that associated with high risk of cervical cancer but not others. Additionally, structure and function of this protein can be altered by functional SNPs, which may lead to the susceptibility of individuals to cancers. Anotherstudy found G399A polymorphisms. We concluded that SNP of this DNA repair genes have been found to be good predictors of efficacy of radiotherapy.