Transcription profiling of human pancreatic cancer treated with masitinib combined with standard gemcitabine chemotherapy

Masitinib is a tyrosine kinase inhibitor of c-Kit, PDGFRα and β, and to some extent Lyn of the Src kinase family. We evaluated the therapeutic potential of masitinib in vitro on human pancreatic tumour cell lines and in vivo in a mouse model of human pancreatic cancer. Experiment Overall Design: Expression patterns of masitinib tyrosine kinase targets including c-Kit, PDGFRα and PDGFRβ were determined in four pancreatic tumour cell lines by PCR. Proliferation assays were performed with masitinib alone or in combination with gemcitabine. To determine the in vivo effects of masitinib, Nog-SCID mice were injected subcutaneously with MiaPaca­2 cells, randomised 28 days later and received one of the following treatments: vehicle control p.o., masitinib p.o., gemcitabine i.p., or a combination of masitinib plus gemcitabine. Additionally, the transcriptome of MiaPaca­2 cells for each of these conditions was determined with Affymetrix arrays.