PBMC and in human colorectal carcinoma xenograft models. Of these, only MYC consistently showed rapid and transient repression in all conditions that were tested. In the setting of fractionated radiotherapy, a synergistic drug should preferably elicit a radiosensitizing molecular event at each 760981-83-7 radiation fraction; hence, a pharmacodynamic biomarker should reflect the timing of drug administration with regard to radiation exposure in a periodic manner. Importantly, in a prior preclinical in vivo study combining vorinostat and fractionated radiation, we observed that tumor histone acetylation, considered a biomarker of vorinostat activity in the radiotherapy target tissue, reached a maximum three hours after intraperitoneal vorinostat injection into the experimental animals and was restored to baseline acetylation level three to six hours later, but with a repetitive, transient induction of acetylation following repeat injections. Of note, tumor growth inhibition after fractionated radiation, representing a long-term phenotypic outcome of the experimental manipulations, was significantly enhanced both when radiation was delivered at peak and restored histone acetylation levels. Consequently, tumor histone hyperacetylation did not seem to be required at the time of radiation exposure, leaving the question of the optimum temporal relationship between administration of the radiosensitizing drug and radiation delivery unaddressed. In the PRAVO study, one patient at each vorinostat dose level had both baseline and repeat tumor biopsy two-and-a-half hours after administration of vorinostat. Histone hyperacetylation was observed in all on-treatment biopsy samples, confirming the Cycloheximide presence of vorinostat in the target at the time of the daily radiation exposure. However, given that one of the objectives of the study was to determine mechanisms of the presumed radiosensitizing action of vorinostat that were not simultaneously manifesting molecular perturbations elicited by the radiation itself, non-irradiated surrogate tissue was collected for the purpose of identifying new biomarkers. Several investigators have demonstrated PBMC histone hyperacetylation on HDAC inhib