Next-Gen Healing: Lab Helps Reimagine Community Cancer Care
Hearing the words “you have cancer” is overwhelming. With so much new information to process, the last thing a patient needs is a long wait to begin treatment.
White Oak Cancer Center and Shady Grove Aquilino Cancer Center, in partnership with Maryland Oncology Hematology, are advancing and accelerating patient care with the launch of a lab for next generation sequencing (NGS) – one of only a few labs integrated into a physician practice in the U.S. Kashif Firozvi, MD, medical director of Cancer Services at Adventist HealthCare, explains how this added technology makes a difference for patients.
What is NGs?
NGS is a cutting-edge technology that allows the analysis of thousands of genes in a single test. In oncology, this testing allows physicians to uncover the unique genetic mutations that drive tumor growth. It unlocks the genetic fingerprint of the cancer, empowering an oncologist to provide the most personalized, targeted therapy for each and every patient.
How does NGS Help to treat cancer?
NGS testing analyzes the constantly changing genetic mutations that promote cancer growth. By knowing this information, oncologists can access treatments that are known to target that particular mutation and, in doing so, provide more effective and less toxic therapy.
How are the cells gathered for testing?
Cell collection can vary for each cancer type. A biopsy, the removal of tissues or cells from your body, is the most common way cancerous cells are collected. In addition, we can now collect small pieces of DNA that are shed from the cancer into the bloodstream and isolate them through a blood draw. This provides another option for patients to have a personalized roadmap for treatment when biopsies aren’t feasible.
How does this impact treatment for patients?
By adding an NGS lab in one of our cancer centers, we can fast-track treatment by completing the testing in the Adventist HealthCare system. Sometimes, patients used to wait more than three weeks for their results to come back from the lab. Now, with our own NGS lab, patients only have to wait one week for their results. A cancer diagnosis is overwhelming enough, and the wait time to start treatment should not have to be an added stressor for patients and their families.
Who can use the NGS Lab?
Patients being treated at Adventist HealthCare cancer centers will have their genomic sequencing completed within White Oak Cancer Center’s Next Generation Sequencing Lab. This should help our oncologists initiate more effective and less toxic treatments for their patients in a shorter period of time.
Tune into the “Adventist HealthCare & You” podcast to learn more about the Next Generation Sequencing Lab. Listen at AHCYou.com/W26Podcast.
Breast surgeon Cynthia Plate, MD, uses NGS to help create personalized treatment plans for her patients.
