Provided by Natera, Signatera is a test to help reveal if cancer may be left in the body, identify recurrence earlier, and potentially inform treatment decisions.
Biomarker testing led to changing Alyssa’s treatment plan, one with a more effective combination of therapies that started to shrink her tumor and allowed her to schedule an upcoming surgery.
After several months of bloody stools and constipation, Ally to Ally moderator Shannon Morock knew something wasn’t quite right with her body. Testing revealed cancer — and an important genetic condition.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved encorafenib (marketed as BRAFTOVI) in combination with cetuximab (marketed as ERBITUX) as a second-line therapy for the treatment of adult patients with metastatic colorectal cancer with a BRAFV600E mutation.
In 25 percent of colorectal cancer cases, patients have a family history of the disease, signaling a possible genetic condition that causes mutations and increases the likelihood of colorectal cancer at a younger age.
Lynch syndrome runs in families from one generation to the next and leads to the most common inherited form of colorectal cancer, also called hereditary non-polyposis colorectal cancer (HNPCC).
While many cancer patients get biomarker testing at diagnosis to explore treatment options, it can also help years after treatment and in unexpected ways.
“Historically, patients with HER2-positive metastatic colorectal cancer who have progressed following frontline therapy have had poor outcomes,” said John Strickler, M.D. and lead investigator of the MOUNTAINEER trial. “The FDA approval of a chemotherapy-free combination regimen that specifically targets HER2 is great news for these patients.”
There is bi-partisan legislation pending in Congress that would fix this and help modernize Medicare and catch up with the advances in genetics and genomic medicine.
When Janice Johnson started experiencing sudden GI symptoms at the age of 48, a cancer diagnosis was the last thing she expected. In fact, it was difficult for her to even get a colonoscopy in the first place, being that the recommended screening age was 50 at the time (2016).
Statistics suggested that Christy’s odds of survival were grim, so she leaned into her faith and kept a positive outlook. She tried to control what she could. And, critically, she received biomarker testing.
The treatment option is for patients with KRASG12C-mutated locally advanced or metastatic colorectal cancer (CRC) who have received prior treatment with fluoropyrimidine-, oxaliplatin-, and irinotecan-based chemotherapy.