cards7up
![]()
Posts:636
I see a lot of Foundation One and other companies like this doing genetic/mutation testing for lung cancer. My concern is that many of these reports list mutations that have been studied in different cancers other than lung cancer but because of the mutation, it lists that this drug should be used. Except this drug has either not been tested yet for LC or is not approved for LC by the FDA. More people are pushing to get these drugs no matter what. I understand that if you're at stage IV and nothing is working, then you'd want to push to try and see if one or any of these drugs may work. Any thoughts on where this is going to lead?
Take care, Judy
Forums
Reply # - May 29, 2014, 08:15 PM
Reply To: Concerns on Mutation/Genome Testing
I think the problem is that these companies make money when they create that hope, whether it's real hope or false hope, but they don't need to worry about the downstream effects if they make their money from step 1.
I think this practice is nearly guaranteed to lead to large numbers of patients and doctors frustrated in their attempts to wrangle expensive drugs just to try on the possibility that it could be helpful, based on the suggestive lead provided by a comprehensive gene panel. In some cases, insurers may relent and cover it. In many/most cases, they won't, and patients will frantically wonder if they've missed something wonderful or sell their home trying to pay on their own for a last ditch miracle in the form of a cancer drug that is priced at a rather ridiculous $12,000/month.
If we're lucky, many of these efforts will pan out, and we'll learn a lot and find promising new leads from the small experiments of a few patients at a time.
If we're unlucky, then these efforts will just lead massive numbers of patients to try more and more wildly expensive treatments that turn out to be ineffective in most cases. We'll just end up pressing the accelerator as the cost of health care drives us into a brick wall.
But nobody really knows.
-Dr. West
Reply # - May 30, 2014, 05:27 AM
Reply To: Concerns on Mutation/Genome Testing
I agree Dr. West and that is my concern. People are pushing to do drugs that have not been tested for their cancer. They believe that if it has the same mutation like EGFR (example) in lung cancer, then it should work the same in colon cancer with the same mutation. This is where I think the confusion lies. These companies are showing drugs used in other cancers with a mutation they show on their report and now they want it. Maybe the solution would be doing smaller trials with various cancers with the same mutation and same drug. Here's to the future! Take care, Judy