Genomic Testing Recommended for Patients With Thyroid Cancer

Marcia Brose, MD, PhD, director of the Center for Rare Cancers and Personalized Therapy, director of the Thyroid Cancer Therapeutics Program, associate professor of Otorhinolaryngology: Head and Neck Surgery at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and associate professor of Medicine at Penn Medicine, discusses the importance of genomic testing in patients with thyroid cancer.

There are so many targeted therapies now for thyroid cancer that it is important to know the genetic and genomic landscape for patients prior to starting even systemic treatment, says Brose. There are 2 reasons for this.

The first reason is about treatment planning. Physicians may want to sequence the different therapies available based on what is available for the patient, Brose says. The second reason is that all approved agents are not the same when it comes to the tolerability of the drug. If a patient has access to a more tolerable agent due to a genetic marker in the tumor, physicians want to know that information because they can start the patient on a different treatment and not deal with quite as high a side effect profile.

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