Clinical OMICs - Issue 4 - (Page 9)

Photo © Monkeybusiness/Deposit Photos Companion diagnostics help explain why some patients showed great improvement when prescribed a cancer medication while others showed no response at all. that oncologists have been very concerned about giving chemotherapy to patients if they don't need it and they haven't had effective ways of sorting these patients out." Next-Generation Genetic Sequencing In addition to information for how aggressively to treat specific cancers, oncologists are increasingly looking to provide targeted therapies based on specific identifiable molecular aberrations. Breast cancer alone has at least five subtypes and determining which subtype a patient has is vital to providing the most effective treatments. Recent diagnostic developments focus on discovering and detecting the specific genetic mutations in cancer subtypes, and for that the industry has largely turned to gene sequencing. Using biopsy tissue, cancer diagnostic companies perform sequencing analysis on panels of 10, 20, or 40 www.clinicalomics.com or more genes at a time targeting the has come down, diagnostics compagenes which, when altered, are most nies can perform the sequencing on associated with that form or cancer. panels with dozens of genes for the So for non-small-cell same amount it cost to lung cancer, screensequence one or two "These technologies...are ing panels would genes just a few years driving medicine away include oncogenes ago. from an art form and associated with that But in order for cancer such as EGFR, genetic sequencing making it much more an KLAS, and others. to be of value to cliinformation science." Panels for other cannicians, diagnostics - David Jackson cers vary based on companies have also those oncogenes that are most clini- invested heavily in their computacally relevant based on the research tional and informatics platforms. literature and the universe of existing "The molecular technologies are drugs targeting those mutations. data-generation technologies. Some "The idea of a single marker linked people have described medicine as to a single drug in an era where an more of an art than a science. I think individual may need to be tested what you are seeing with the evolufor two, three, five, 10, or 20 markers tion of these technologies is they really doesn't fit for delivering tar- are driving medicine away from an geted therapy, given the explosion of art form and making it much more genomic information available," said an information science," said David Vincent Miller, chief medical officer Jackson, CSO, with MolecularHealth. with Foundation Medicine. Even bet- That's because companies like Molecter, as the price of genetic sequencing (continued on next page) May 29, 2014 Clinical OMICs 9 http://www.clinicalomics.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clinical OMICs - Issue 4

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Clinical OMICs - Issue 4