A: The future of this emerging technology is extremely promising for changing the way we not only diagnose new cases, but how we manage active treatment cases. The fact that we may now be able to determine disease response and/or recurrence earlier than currently possible with anatomic imaging technologies will significantly enhance the way we manage our patients. It will allow for earlier intervention with potentially more effective alternative therapies when we know a patient is not responding to what is being used.

A: We have utilized next generation genomic and proteomic sequencing technologies to identify those molecular alterations and/or pathways associated with resistance mechanisms to targeted therapies. As stated above, these type of data could lead to even earlier alternative interventions when our initial therapies have fail to achieve the desired clinical outcomes.

A: The validation that these newer technologies can give accurate information much earlier than the older anatomic-based methods of evaluating disease status could bring significant improvements in how we manage cancer. It would be very useful, indeed critical, to know when cessation of an approved but possibly ineffective therapeutic approach for an individual patient is failing to achieve the desired clinical effect. The sooner we have these type of data, the better for our patients and our ability to optimally manage their disease. That alone could result in significant savings to a health system where cancer drug costs are so high. In addition, the cost of deploying ct-effective and accurate genomic tests for screening, diagnostic and response assessment activity should make such an approach even more cost-effective than our many of our current anatomic-based methods for these decisions.