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Diagnostic test predicts the future behavior of tumors

By | November 29, 2012, 9:20 PM PST

Mammograms and biopsies often leave plenty of doubt in doctors treating cancer patients.

To help tailor treatment options to individual patients, Genomic Health provides patients with detailed analyses of the genetic makeup of their tumors — along with how likely they are to respond to chemotherapy, and to recur. Bloomberg Businessweek reports.

The Silicon Valley-based molecular diagnostics company has been providing these tests – called Oncotype DX — for breast cancer patients since 2004. Now they’re doing similar diagnostic work with colon cancer. They hope to have a test for prostate cancer next year, followed by tests for lung and skin cancers.

About a decade ago, Genomic Health’s founders developed new ways of extracting genetic material from samples of cancerous tumors that research centers and hospitals had in storage — allowing them to study the genetic makeup of the tumors and to compare it against the outcomes of patients who had been studied for up to three decades.

From this, they developed an algorithm that could examine 21 genes from a breast cancer tumor and make a very precise prediction about its future behavior. Their results were confirmed in clinical trials.

“For many years, we have been overtreating with chemotherapy,” says oncologist Elwyn Cabebe. “Prior to this test, we had to guesstimate what the risks and possible benefits of chemo would be.”

Last year about 66,000 patients took Genomic Health’s diagnostic tests at a cost of about $4,000 each.

[Via Bloomberg Businessweek]

Image: Oncotype DX breast cancer assay

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Janet Fang

About Janet Fang

Janet Fang is a contributing editor for SmartPlanet.

Janet Fang

Janet Fang
Contributing Editor, Healthcare

Janet Fang has written for Nature, Discover and the Point Reyes Light. She is currently a lab technician at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. She holds degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and Columbia University. She is based in New York.

Follow her on Twitter.

Janet Fang

Janet Fang

Janet does not have financial holdings that would influence how or what she covers.

She writes for SmartPlanet and is not an employee of CBS.

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Chem & radio therapy a menace to healing.
The physician is a menace to their victim / patient.
chem and radio therapy enrich diagnosticians and feed the cancer, try Graviola fruit or bees wax or modified diet fostering foods hostile to cancer progress
The Latest Weapon in the War on Cancer: Honey Bees http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/11/24/honey-bees-for-cancer-treatment.aspx this struck me as being relevant and important for the understated purposes of inflammation management, it becoming increasingly a challenging problem with our tendency to a sedentary life style.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151246801859235&set=a.10151173615969235.465721.574384234&type=1&theater
30 Years of Breast Screening: 1.3 Million Wrongly Treated
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/30-years-breast-screening-13-million-wrongly-treated
The Sour Sop or the fruit from the graviola tree is a miraculous natural cancer cell killer 10,000 times stronger than Chemo.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151173812549235&set=a.10151173615969235.465721.574384234&type=3&theater
Posted by leozexpat
Updated - 30th Nov
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