Guinigundo is a nurse practitioner and the director of precision oncology for Cincinnati Most cancers Advisors. He sat down with CURE throughout the 42nd Annual Miami Breast Most cancers Convention to debate biomarkers and the position they will play through the therapy journey of a affected person with breast most cancers.
“It positively can change your therapy plan,” mentioned Guinigundo. “With these estrogen receptors, progesterone receptors, HER2 that we have been checking for all these a long time, it tells us whether or not or not you may take an anti-estrogen tablet or ought to take an anti-estrogen tablet sooner or later in your remedy, or it will not work.”
Transcript:
The road between conventional pathology and biomarker testing is turning into more and more blurry. The standard biomarkers that we have been taking a look at for many years now—estrogen receptors, progesterone receptors (generally abbreviated as ER, PR), and HER2—we have been checking these for twenty years or longer. Nonetheless, a few of these newer biomarkers are a bit completely different. Inside right now’s science, we’re trying loads at genetic markers—so, whether or not it is one thing we inherited from our mother and father, or one thing the tumor has that is distinctive to itself, completely different from each different cell in your physique. In that sense, it differs from conventional pathology.
Sure, it could change your therapy plan. Like I mentioned, with estrogen receptors, progesterone receptors, and HER2, which we have been checking for all these a long time, it tells us whether or not you may or ought to take an anti-estrogen tablet sooner or later in your remedy, or if it will not work. It tells us whether or not try to be taking a drug like Herceptin (trastuzumab), which is an anti-HER2 drug. However sure, a few of these newer biomarkers are very particular: you’ve got a goal, you’ve got a drug. If you do not have that focus on, you may’t use that drug.
Transcript has been edited for readability and conciseness.
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