What is the role of genetic sequencing in the ongoing management of cancer? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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If you’ve been diagnosed with cancer of a solid organ, things like prostate or breast, genetic analysis of your tumor may prove to provide important information on the best way to manage your disease, a recent study shows. William Nelson, director of the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, explains.

Nelson: They did a study of 1138 patients with solid organ cancer. They could get good sequences from 1015 of them. They looked at either the whole genome or the key suspicious genes, there’s about 1700 of them. What was interesting is they found so called ‘actionable’ gene alterations, the kinds of things you were looking for and so would make a difference in treatment, in 817, which is a what 80 plus percent of the folks.  :27

Nelson says there’s also a place for looking at recurrent cancers since genes change, or mutate, and may also have implications for cancer treatment. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.