AUTHOR=Astras George , Papagiannopoulos Christos I. , Kyritsis Konstantinos A. , Markitani Constantina , Vizirianakis Ioannis S. 

TITLE=Pharmacogenomic Testing to Guide Personalized Cancer Medicine Decisions in Private Oncology Practice: A Case Study

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Oncology

VOLUME=Volume 10 - 2020

YEAR=2020

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/oncology/articles/10.3389/fonc.2020.00521

DOI=10.3389/fonc.2020.00521

ISSN=2234-943X

ABSTRACT=Innovative tumor profiling methodologies are utilized to elucidate the pharmacogenomic landscape of tumor cells in order to support the molecularly-guided delivery of therapeutics. Indeed, improved clinical outcomes are achieved in oncology practice by providing the physicians with expert-guided, standardized and easily interpretable knowledge, translated from molecular profiling analysis to support clinical decision-making. However, there is still limited utilization of the technology especially in small private oncology practices. In this work, we analyzed how molecularly-guided interventions in seventeen consented cancer patients led to an overall improvement of disease response rates in a private oncology center. The precision medicine strategy was based on the OncoDEEP™ profiling solutions, and focused on finding clinically-actionable relationships between tumor biomarkers and drug responses. The obtained data support the notion that: a) following the pharmacogenomic derived recommendations favorably impacted cancer therapy progression; and b) the earlier profiling followed by the delivery of molecularly-targeted therapy led to more durable and improved pharmacological response rates. Moreover, we report the example of a patient with metastatic gastric adenocarcinoma who, based on the molecular profiling data, received an off-label therapy which resulted in a complete response and a current cancer-free maintenance status. Overall, our data provide a paradigm on how molecular tumor profiling can improve decision making in the routine private oncology practice.