Advances help patients prepare for trajectory of their disease
In contrast to genetics, which focuses on genes and inheritance, the goal of genomic testing is to understand how genes behave and influence their environment. Although it is a relatively young and evolving field, genome-based medicine, frequently called personalized medicine, is the future of healthcare—the next logical step through which more is known about human genetics, disease and wellness than ever before.
Personalized medicine promises to make treatment as individualized as the disease. It involves translating genetic, genomic and clinical information into precise diagnostic tests and targeted therapies. Advances in this area of science are also opening the door to far more accurate predictive tests for cancers that allow doctors to better treat and prepare their patients for the trajectory of their disease.
For uveal melanoma, a potentially aggressive eye cancer, there is a genomic test called DecisionDx-UM that identifies the gene-expression profile (GEP) of an eye tumor, and predicts with a high degree of accuracy the likelihood it will metastasize or spread to other parts of the body, in most cases to the liver. The level of accuracy of the DecisionDx-UM test is unparalleled in the prognostic testing of uveal melanoma, and has rarely been achieved even in other more common cancers.
