Feist-Weiller, which runs the Louisiana State University Health Shreveport Cancer Center, recently partnered with biosciences company Caris Life Sciences to offer its patients a tumor profiling technology. This method will allow doctors to identify with precision the unique biological characteristics of each patient’s tumor, ultimately serving as a way for healthcare providers to choose personalized chemo and radiation therapy regimens.
The clinical molecular profiling program will use Caris’s Molecular Intelligence service. Through multiple evidence-guided technologies, this method gives oncologists relevant, clinically actionable and individualized information to personalize cancer treatments. In addition, the partnership includes clinical support, patient and physician education and system integration.
For cancer patients, this comes as exciting news, since radiation resistance in some types of cancer often prevents patients from positively respond to therapy. According to Cherie-Ann O. Nathan, chairman, professor and director of Head and Neck Surgical Oncology and Research, this system can identify patients who may not benefit from radiation therapy, or who would benefit from alternative radiosensitizing chemotherapy. Ultimately, this program will improve not only clinical care for patients, but also the Center’s research programs, she said in a press release.
Caris Life Sciences has previously presented the results of its tumor profiling and precision medicine regarding various types of cancers, such as colorectal, triple negative and metaplastic breast, ovarian, and gastrointestinal cancers. Results have shown that, for each of these types of cancer, using the molecular profiling program significantly improves survivorship among patients. As a researcher of one of these studies explained back in June, this is because “a patient’s outcome is strongly influenced by the ability to select appropriate therapies and avoid inappropriate therapies enhanced.”
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