Precision medicine

When cancer becomes difficult to treat, it’s time to take a closer look at your treatment plan. By studying your cancer’s unique characteristics, Advocate Health Care can help develop a specialized path forward using targeted therapy.

What is precision medicine?

Precision medicine, also known as personalized medicine or precision oncology, is a data-focused approach to personalizing cancer care using your tumor’s molecular footprint. The goal of precision medicine is to provide patients with treatment options tailored to their unique needs. By accessing a database of other cancer cases across the country, doctors can compare your tumor with other patients’ health circumstances, what treatments were tried and what the outcomes were.

Precision medicine offers a wide range of targeted approaches for many different cancer types, including solid tumors, hematologic malignancies and central nervous system tumors.

What is a tumor’s molecular footprint?

A tumor’s molecular footprint is how it affects and interacts with other molecules in your body. Identifying your tumor’s molecular footprint helps develop treatment that considers the differences in your genes, environment and lifestyle – instead of treating with a “one size fits all” approach.

These insights are collected in the Oncology Precision Network database.

What is the Oncology Precision Network database?

The Oncology Precision Network (OPeN) is the nation’s largest database dedicated to facilitating breakthroughs in cancer care. It allows for faster sharing of data in relation to other molecular footprints and helps health care professionals find other tumors that share the same nuances as yours.

This database collects clinical, molecular and treatment data to yield new insights into what’s worked and what hasn’t for tumors just like yours. This data might otherwise remain unpublished or take a long time to release. OPeN allows insights to be shared from over 100,000 cases, leading to more informed treatments and better outcomes for patients.

Stage 4 cancer and personalized medicine

Some cancers respond well to standard treatments. However, if you have stage 4 cancer and it stops responding to therapy, you will need a new solution quickly. Precision medicine can help identify what’s worked in similar cancer cases and allow for a fast pivot to an alternative treatment.

For those healthy enough for treatment, the process begins by getting tested for tumor mutations. The clinic team will perform a biopsy to take new tissue samples, to make sure the data being used is as recent and accurate as possible. If the tumor is hard to reach or you prefer not to undergo a biopsy, a blood test may look for the DNA that tumors may shed into the blood.

A lab examines the DNA for all relevant genetic changes, including genetic mutations. Using special software and an extensive database, similar tumors are analyzed by the Molecular Tumor Board to determine which treatments may work the best for you.

What is the Molecular Tumor Board?

The Molecular Tumor Board (MTB) is a multidisciplinary team of experts in oncology, pathology, pharmacy, genetic counseling and research coordination. They review molecular profile results from the OPeN database and provide recommendations on targeted treatment options, additional somatic testing, germline implications and potential clinical trial eligibility.

Every facet of your cancer treatment is considered to leverage the latest developments in a rapidly evolving, highly specialized field.

Specialized treatment and therapy

The advanced software and strategic partnerships with other top centers allow us to identify promising medications or treatments that may not have been considered otherwise. Drugs for targeted therapy or immunotherapy may be part of a clinical trial or be negotiated for a non-approved use. Chemotherapy may be used if a treatment match can’t be made using the database.

Precision medicine at Advocate Health Care

At Advocate Health Care, our dedicated precision medicine team helps doctors, research coordinators and genetic counselors review patients for candidacy for clinical trials and genetic predispositions in order to deliver the best results for patients like you.

Find an Advocate Cancer Institute