The development of clinical resistance to anti-cancer drugs is a major obstacle in the treatment of patients with chemotherapy. In the USA alone >500,000 patients die from Cancer in spite of receiving chemotherapy. Indeed, it is well known that most cancer patients initially respond to chemotherapy only to become resistant to a complex cocktail of anti-cancer drugs.  Moreover, it is also known that a significant number of patients with solid tumors are intrinsically resistant to first-line chemotherapy. Consequently, these patients suffer the side effects of such first-line chemotherapy with no gained health benefit. An example of the latter is ovarian cancer where first-line chemotherapy consists of a combination of pactitaxel and carbo- or cis-platin and second-line chemotherapy consists of the latter two drugs plus gemcitabine HCl or topotecan HCl.  Therefore, it is extremely important to develop diagnostic biomarkers and methods that can identify:

•	Non-responsive tumors prior to first-line chemotherapy
•	Patients that will respond to specific anti-cancer treatment, based on the expression of specific set of genes in their tumors or blood
•	The rise of drug resistance in patients during chemotherapeutic treatment
•	The most effective drug combination for each tumor (personalized medicine)

Aurelium BioPharma, has identified a list of 63 genes that are increased or decreased in tumors that are resistant to various types of anti-cancer drugs. Coupled with previously identified genes associated with drug resistance together with other tissue-specific markers, the *MMD™ array has been developed.  Tumors from cancer patients can be processed in a pathology laboratory to determine the chemo-resistance status of such a tumor and the best combination of anti-cancer drugs for most clinical benefit.

*The chemo-resistance test is an investigational in vitro diagnostic test that has not yet been approved by the FDA.