There are two ways to achieve major improvements
in cancer chemotherapy. One way is
to discover new drugs and indeed many are on the horizon.
However, this doesn’t help the cancer patient who needs treatment today.
Happily, many potentially effective drugs already exist.
Therefore, the other way to improve chemotherapy is to use the existing
drugs more effectively. That is
where Functional Tumor Cell Profiling comes in.
The Weisenthal Cancer Group is dedicated to matching each patient with
the treatment that offers the best chance for success based upon demonstrated
activity in the laboratory against each patient’s actual tumor cells.
We offer three levels of clinical service.
For all levels of service, a separate, written interpretation of assay
results by Larry Weisenthal, M.D., Ph.D. also is available.
Apart from our fully-validated, non-investigational clinical service
options, some patients may be candidates for a research study (click
here or phone 714-596-2100 for information).
Most cancer patients do not need the research study (in fact, most patients
would not qualify) and are very well-served by our non-investigational clinical
profiles. Our clinical (standard
practice) services are described below
The Comprehensive Profile
This is the level of service that is right for
most patients. It includes both the
CytoRx™ profile for standard chemotherapy drugs
and the EGFRx™ Profile for the new, targeted
tyrosine kinase inhibiting drugs.
The use of both profiles allows for testing of reasonable drug
combinations in which both standard and targeted drugs are combined in order to
assess synergistic drug effects, if present.
Increasingly, clinicians are finding that the
best results often are obtained by administering standard and targeted drugs in
combination. Clinical trials
currently are underway or are in planning stages. These will help to
identify the best combinations of drugs for the “average” cancer patient.
As always, we contend that no cancer patient is average.
Comprehensive Functional Tumor Cell Profiling allows each patient to
receive the most appropriate standard drug plus targeted drug combination even
while some of these combinations are still awaiting trial and error discovery in
the clinic.
There is also a financial benefit to the patient
in performing concurrent Standard and Targeted profiles.
This is because some procedures relating to specimen preparation are necessary
for both profile types.
Preparing a single specimen for use in both profiles saves time and
expense. When added to a Standard
Profile, we are able to offer the patient a substantial fee reduction for the
companion Targeted Therapy Profile.
Available with the Comprehensive Profile is a
written interpretation in which Dr. Weisenthal integrates results from both the
CytoRx™ profile and the EGFRx™ profile and suggests rational treatment
strategies based upon profiling results and published drug activity and toxicity
data.
Standard Drug Profile
There may be cases when a patient or cancer
physician is interested only in the activity of standard chemotherapy agents.
This may be because a patient is not, for some reason, considered to be a
candidate for treatment with a targeted therapy drug.
The Standard Drug profile consists of the CytoRx™ test in which 20 – 30
standard anti-cancer drugs are tested. In
addition to testing all drugs as single agents, some drugs will be tested in
combination if complementary mechanisms of action, lack of cross resistance, and
acceptable levels of cross toxicity suggest that drug synergy is possible.
A separate, written
interpretation of Standard Drug profiling results by Dr. Weisenthal is available.
Targeted Therapy Profile
If patient and physician wish to obtain
information pertaining only to targeted therapy drugs that inhibit
tyrosine kinase activity, the EGFRx™
Profile may be ordered separately.
The targeted therapy profile includes analysis of the following targeted
drugs: erlotinib (Tarceva), gefitinib (Iressa®), sorafenib (Nexavar®), sunitinib (Sutent®),
and, in some cases, lapatinib (Tykerb®). For certain
types of cancer, a drug called imatinib (Gleevec®), which works in a very
different way, may be tested.
A separate, written interpretation of Targeted Therapy profiling results by Dr. Weisenthal is available.
