Here at University Cancer & Blood Center, it’s our top priority to provide our patients in Northeast Georgia with quality care and the newest most effective treatment options after a cancer diagnosis. One way that our physicians achieve this is through tailoring treatment options based on comprehensive tumor profiling for genomic variants and immunotherapy markers. This has led UCBC to create one of the most robust molecular testing programs in the country.

Molecular testing allows for further characterization of a patient’s cancer by detecting alterations in DNA and RNA sequences as well as protein expression. This testing can be performed on a tissue or blood sample. The identification of an actionable alteration allows our physicians to personalize treatment options based on a patient’s individual tumor profile, as opposed to broadly treating a cancer type.

For example, there are many standard treatment options available for a patient with stage IV lung cancer, such as chemotherapy. While chemotherapy may be the most appropriate option in certain cases, molecular testing could potentially reveal an actionable alteration where a treatment other than chemotherapy  may be of greater benefit. Such treatments like targeted therapies or immunotherapies are generally well tolerated and cause fewer adverse events than treatments like chemotherapy. Targeted therapies work specifically within the cancer cells to inhibit growth and spread. Like a light switch, the alteration turns the cancer on while the therapy targeting that alteration turns it off. Immunotherapies aides one’s own immune system in targeting and killing cancer cells. Furthermore, our physicians utilize molecular testing to assess for clinical trial treatment options. Comprehensive molecular testing is crucial in research in a time when many clinical trials are investigating treatments based on molecular findings instead of a specific cancer diagnosis.

The physicians at UCBC recognize the importance of identifying all possible treatment options to discuss with our patients and decide together on the best plan to implement.  This is why we incorporate molecular testing as a standard practice and developed a state-of-the-art molecular testing program, giving every patient at UCBC the benefit of the most personalized approach.

Ask your physician about molecular testing for more information.