Precision Medicine in Oncology

The use of the circulating tumor DNA workflow demonstrated a proof of concept for this system of guiding treatment in the most common form of ovarian cancer.

With a biomarker attached, the odds of a drug being approved goes up from about 10% to greater than 25%, explained Howard A. "Skip" Burris, III, MD, FACP, FASCO, president, clinical operations, and chief medical officer of Sarah Cannon Research Institute.

Healthcare is very comfortable with treating a disease, but it’s not as good with handling cures. However, the advent of gene therapy and precision medicine means more and more expensive cures are coming down the pipeline, said panelists on the last day of Asembia’s 15th annual Specialty Pharmacy Summit, held April 29 to May 2 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Patients who adhere to a CancerIQ cancer prevention plan, or cancer survivorship plan, are more likely to catch a cancer before it grows beyond 1 centimeter, says Feyi Olopade Ayodele, MBA, chief executive officer at CancerIQ.

The venture should help Amgen make use of new FDA guidance allowing broader use of real-world evidence to speed approval of oncology drugs to market.

CancerIQ has automated a lot of time-consuming steps to allow operationally efficient community cancer centers a way of offering genetic screening in a profitable manner, said Feyi Olopade Ayodele, MBA, chief executive officer at CancerIQ.

Working from findings in the landmark TAILORx study, reseachers estimated that Oncotype DX-guided treatment could reduce the total first-year breast cancer care by nearly $50 million across the United States.

Howard A. "Skip" Burris, III, MD, FACP, FASCO, president, clinical operations, and chief medical officer of Sarah Cannon Research Institute, discusses differentiating which patients will benefit from next-generation sequencing (NGS) and the role of NGS testing for matching patients to clinical trials.

It's estimated that by 2021, 100 million people will have used a direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic test. As these tests continue to gain popularity, there is a need for educating consumers on their DTC testing results and validating these results with confirmatory testing in a medical-grade laboratory.

Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) can be analyzed in patients with cancer to detect minimal residual disease (MRD). Two abstracts, presented at the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2019, evaluated ctDNA analysis and ways of tracking MRD.

The scientists used machine learning to test the algorithm and believe it could double the number of women who would be treated with poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors for breast cancer.

Through partnerships, CancerIQ tries to reduce barriers for patients to use genetic services to detect cancer early, said Feyi Olopade Ayodele, MBA, chief executive officer at CancerIQ.

The treatment of lung cancer with personalized medicine has come a long way in recent decades, but still more achievements remain to be seen, said Bruce Johnson, MD, FASCO, immediate past president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, during his keynote speech opening the Business of Oncology Summit hosted by the Florida Society of Clinical Oncology in Kissimmee, Florida.

The filing comes as recent upgrades to NCCN guidelines expand the role of testing in the treatment of ovarian cancer.

Genetic alternations in colorectal cancer (CRC) are linked to different survival and treatment outcomes, according to a study that used next-generation sequencing (NGS) of tumor DNA. The study was published in Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Healthcare experts may agree the shift from volume to value is well under way, but the definition of value has many answers, according to pharmaceutical company representatives discussing the issue at the 2019 Community Oncology Conference in Orlando, Florida.

Howard A. "Skip" Burris, III, MD, FACP, FASCO, president, clinical operations, and chief medical officer of Sarah Cannon Research Institute, discusses what's needed from a policy perspective to ensure access to next-generation sequencing (NGS) tests.

As novel therapies drive up the cost of drugs, it is becoming increasingly difficult for community oncologists to keep costs below value-based care program targets, according to a new survey from Integra Connect.

Recent work looking at the response to immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy given before surgery for advanced melanoma found increased infiltration of B cells, a type of white blood cell, in patients who responded to therapy compared with those who did not.

A lack of diversity in cell lines used for laboratory studies means underrepresented populations and minorities might not benefit from precision medicines as quickly as people from European ancestry.

Biomarker testing will start to evolve to look more at combination therapies, said Jarushka Naidoo, MB BCh, of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins.

A presentation Saturday at the National Comprehensive Cancer Network Annual Conference in Orlando, Florida, outlined several key updates for treatment in ovarian cancer based on new studies and approvals for poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors and bevacizumab.

Germline testing at diagnosis, along with tumor testing, have the potential to identify candidates for investigational poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors, and updated guidelines call for their expanded use.

CancerIQ is reducing barriers that make it difficult to utilize genetic testing to predict or pre-empt a patient’s cancer diagnosis, explained Feyi Olopade Ayodele, MBA, chief executive officer at CancerIQ.

Multigene testing provides a lot of information that providers have to be familiar with in order to adequately explain it to their patients, said John H. Ward, MD, Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah.