TUMOUR PROFILING FOR PERSONALISED CANCER THERAPY

NOV 29, 2018 @3.14 PM
Healthcaretoday, Tumour profiling, anti-cancer-therapies, precision medicine, Caris Molecular Intelligence, Mundipharma,
Left to right: Mundipharma Medical Director (Singapore & Malaysia) South East Asia Medical Head Dr Murtaza Qasuri, Dr Klaus Schuster and Dr Kua Voon Fong at the “Treat Cancer Smarter with Tumour Profiling” campaign launch.
Oncologist in Malaysia can now determine how best to treat their patient's tumour with the availability of multiple tumour profiling service. 

This is made possible through an agreement which was signed in 2016 between Mundipharma Pharmaceuticals Sdn Bhd (Mundipharma) with Caris Life Sciences (Caris); a leading US biotechnology company to promote Caris Molecular Intelligence (CMI), the largest and most experienced tumour profiling platform to Malaysia.

Previously, tumour profiling was only applicable to certain types of cancer such as breast, lung and colorectal cancers.

CMI is the first of its kind tumour profiling service that uses multiple tumour profiling technologies to decode numerous types of cancer. Upon two weeks of sending a tissue sample to Caris’ modern laboratory in Phoenix, Arizona, a report with comprehensive and reliable information will be delivered to the oncologist to ensure they have the most advanced and latest data when evaluating how best to treat their patient’s tumour.

In an effort to continue to drive awareness and greater understanding of how tumour profiling can provide timely and reliable information to impact cancer care treatment options, Mundipharma and Caris jointly launched the “Treat Cancer Smarter with Tumour Profiling” awareness campaign recently. 

Speaking at the campaign launch, Caris Life Sciences International Medical Director Dr. Klaus Schuster said, “The future of cancer treatment steers towards a more personalised and tailor-made therapy. Tumour profiling and precision medicine offers a complementary win-win support to the current standard of care. With tumour profiling, oncologists can identify various anti-cancer-therapies that may not have been readily considered to give patients more treatment options with a higher probability of success. Profiling tumour not only improves clinical outcomes, but it can also optimize resource allocation, avoiding unnecessary side effects and unnecessary toxicity.”

“Also known as molecular profiling, tumour profiling is a form of testing that categorises tumours based on its genetic make-up to help diagnose and treat cancer with precision medicine. From a [tissue-based] biopsy from the patient’s tumour, tumour profiling examines the DNA of the cancer cells, looking for biomarkers and genetic alterations that have been acquired by these cells,” Consultant Clinical Oncologist Dr Kua Voon Fong said.

The results derived from tumour profiling gives oncologists a significant amount of predictive, prognostic and therapeutic information early in the patient’s cancer diagnosis. This is vital because the first course of treatment is often the most important in controlling and perhaps curing the cancer!

According to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), patients who may benefit from CMI include those with advanced cancer, rare or aggressive cancer where no standard of care is defined and patients looking for possible multiple treatment options.  

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