Dr. Weeks’ Comment: We at the Weeks Clinic have offered genetic screening and chemosensitivity testing based on oncogene analysis for years. Why guess which chemo drug might be most targeted and effective in your case? Why not test first? After all, you get a culture and sensitivity test to determine which antibiotic is indicated for your urinary tract infection. Why is treatment of a common urinary tract infection therapy more rational and logical than is your cancer treatment??
Researchers Seek To Tailor Cancer Treatments To Disease’s Genetic Underpinnings.
In a PBS NewsHour (1/13) segment, part two in a two-part series, NewsHour health correspondent Betty Ann Bowser examined “how researchers are tailoring individual treatments to cure or manage the disease in adults by attacking the genetic underpinnings.” Dr. David Gandara, an oncologist at U.C. Davis Cancer Center, said that “if you have a cancer like pancreatic cancer or lung cancer, where literally there might be hundreds of genes that might be altered in even one patient’s cancer, then sorting that out and figuring out why Mrs. Jones has to be treated differently than from Mr. Smith, it is a major task.” Dr. Gandara added, “What we would like to be able to do in the future is — it’s a little bit like ‘Star Trek,’ where a patient goes into a pharmacy, and they say here is my molecular profile of my cancer, and the pharmacist gives them a pill that’s designed specifically for their cancer.”
For examples of the chemosensitivity testing available at the Weeks Clinic , see www.biofocus.de (blood sample) and also see www.precisiontherapeutics.com (fresh tissue sample) and urge your oncologist to “look” before he /she leaps” into a treatment protocol for your cancer.
