“Genetic testing is really about the patient, and it is helpful to find out what is the patient’s risk” to a particular disease explained Edmund Pezalla, MD, MPH. He thinks that research in this field—prediction of an individual’s risk for a particular type of cancer such as breast or prostate or colon cancer— is currently in its early stages.
“Genomics, on the other hand is about the tumor itself. The tumor has a different genetic makeup than the patient, and it might actually have a different genetic makeup subsequent to treatment. So a tumor further down the treatment road may be different from where it started,” said Dr Pezalla.
“So genomics is important in that it specifically tells us about the tumor that the patient has and it helps us guide treatment, while genetics is about the patient and it helps us guide screening and other preventive services,” he explained.
Oncology Onward: A Conversation With Penn Medicine's Dr Justin Bekelman
December 19th 2023Justin Bekelman, MD, director of the Penn Center for Cancer Care Innovation, sat with our hosts Emeline Aviki, MD, MBA, and Stephen Schleicher, MD, MBA, for our final episode of 2023 to discuss the importance of collaboration between academic medicine and community oncology and testing innovative cancer care delivery in these settings.
Listen