GENOMIC TESTING

Lung Cancer

Lawrence D. Wagman, MD, FACS, executive medical director of St. Joseph&rsquo;s Hospital, discusses the future of precision medicine and genetic testing in the community.<br /> &nbsp;

The day when oncologists can order a Medicare-covered next-generation sequencing diagnostic test may be near at hand, but once this change goes into effect, will oncologists be limited to certain tests, labs, and cancer settings? The answer is unclear.

With genetic screening for mutations and biomarkers gaining more prevalence in diagnosing and treating cancer, genetic testing and counseling for patients with prostate cancer is becoming a pressing concept that urologists need to better understand. At the 2017 LUGPA Annual Meeting, Leonard Gomella, MD, gave a presentation stressing the importance of integrating genetic testing into clinical practice.

John L. Marshall, MD,&nbsp;chief, Division of Hematology/Oncology, Medstar Georgetown University Hospital, director, Otto J. Ruesch Center for the Cure of Gastrointestinal Cancer, discusses when to order next-generation sequencing for a patient with metastatic colon cancer.

As the breast cancer genome continues to be unraveled, a host of new targetable alterations outside of HER2 and the estrogen receptor are beginning to emerge, providing the exciting potential for development of new therapies.

Advancements made in the field of molecular genetics for patients with myeloproliferative neoplasms may be increasingly incorporated into treatment decisions, according to a presentation by Ann Mullally, MD, during the 2017 SOHO Annual Meeting.

Comprehensive genomic testing is not yet widespread, but a French study presented at the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting suggested that DNA profiling can be of important value in advancing personalized medicine. Patients who received molecularly targeted agents based on genomic profiles had longer 3-year and 5-year overall survival than those who did not.

Siddhartha Devarakonda, MD, highlights&nbsp;the importance of testing for molecular markers, some of the rarer mutations, and what work lies ahead for the field of NSCLC.

During the Society for Gynecologic Oncology 48th Annual Meeting in National Harbor, Maryland, Jubilee Brown, MD,&nbsp;offered advice on where to access this counseling and why it is so important for women with ovarian cancer to advocate for genetic testing.&nbsp;

The recommendation for molecular testing made in the&nbsp;second revision of the 2016 guidelines on bladder cancer&nbsp;from the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN)&nbsp;could&nbsp;make a considerable difference in increasing the amount of trials&nbsp;and targeted therapies in the long run for subtypes of patients&nbsp;with bladder cancer.