Advances in Genomic Testing in Cancer Care

David L. Bartlett, MD, chair of the Allegheny Health Network Cancer Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, discusses the benefits of genomic testing for patients with cancer and how the approach to genomic testing has changed over the years.

According to Bartlett, genomic testing is key in tailoring therapy to target specific mutations for a patient with cancer. In recent years, there has been a remarkable expansion in the understanding of tumor genomics, with the number of genes routinely screened for known mutations increasing from just a few to over 500. One of the biggest advancements has been the improved ability to analyze these mutations at a rapid speed.

Transcription:

0:09 | Genomic testing is basically us looking at all the mutations that exist within a cancer. We biopsy the cancer, and then we sequence the cancer and identify the mutations associated with that cancer. This is extremely important for us to be able to target therapy to those specific mutations. While not every cancer has targeted therapy, we are seeing more cancers over time develop targeted therapies specific to mutations. Knowing those mutations upfront is extremely important for us.

0:42 | Over the years, [we have seen] an explosion of our understanding of tumor genomics and what mutations exist within the tumor. What used to be a panel of 2 or 3 mutations that we would look for in a tumor, we are now up to greater than 500 genes that we regularly screen for known mutations that impact cancer specifically. The amount of genetic material that we assess for and then the number of mutations, and also the efficiency of doing that [has improved]. The original Cancer Genome Project and Human Genome Project took 13 years for a single sequence, which we can now do in a day, so the efficiency of our ability to analyze these mutations has improved over time.