Jennifer Marie Suga, MD

Jennifer Marie Suga, MD, a medical oncologist at Kaiser Permanente Vallejo Medical Center, discusses how the results from next-generation sequencing (NGS) tests are assessed to help physicians manage their patients in real-time.

Suga says that the genomic oncology committee evaluated each of those results for several things. They looked at whether there is an FDA-approved drug for that patient based on their NGS results. Another aspect they considered was if an FDA-approved drug for an alternative cancer had clinical evidence of activity in that patient’s cancer setting. The committee made decisions based on whether there was a relevant clinical trial within the patient’s network or in the patient’s local area. They also looked at whether the patient required additional genetic testing and counseling as determined by their genetics team.

A comprehensive review showed that approximately 40% of patients had an actionable mutation in NGS findings. Among those patients, certain tumor types such as lung cancer and breast cancer have about a 50% rate of actionable mutations. About 22% of those patients were potentially eligible for a clinical trial within the area, and about 11% were eligible for an FDA-approved drug or 1 that was promising in that indication, according to Suga.

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Jennifer Marie Suga, MD, discusses how the results from next-generation sequencing tests are assessed to help physicians manage their patients in real-time.

Committee Helps Physician's Find Best Options for Patients Through NGS

Jennifer Marie Suga, MD, a medical oncologist at Kaiser Permanente Vallejo Medical Center, discusses implementing a genomic oncology program at Kaiser Permanente Northern California through large-scale genomic next generation sequencing (NGS) testing of patients with advanced cancers in the community setting.

Suga says that the goals of this project are to address how to increase the utilization of NGS testing and make it more widespread in community oncology practices. One of the practical challenges for testing in the community setting is lack of access at scale; many health care systems and institutions do not have a lot of robust infrastructure and processes to deliver routine broad-spectrum NGS testing for all patients with advanced cancer, according to Suga.

Employing this comprehensive genomic oncology program will hopefully support community oncologists from the time they ordered the test up to when they receive the results to ultimately increase the utilization of NGS in the community setting, Suga explains. To implement this program, Kaiser Permanente partnered with Strata Oncology, who provided a form through their clinical trials protocol for Kaiser to provide the NGS test for community practices. After that, they will work toward implementing a process for ordering the test all the way through interpretation and results.

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Jennifer Marie Suga, MD, discusses implementing a genomic oncology program at Kaiser Permanente Northern California through large-scale genomic next generation sequencing testing of patients with advanced cancers in the community setting.

Jennifer Marie Suga, MD | Authors

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Committee Helps Physician's Find Best Options for Patients Through NGS

Discussing How to Bring Next-Generation Sequencing to Community Practices