Hospitals

Latest cancer education: Patients asking doctors about personalized medicine

The Is My Cancer Different? campaign urges patients to ask their doctors a crucial question — is my cancer different? — and provides powerful information on why, when and how it could matter to their treatment choices. Presented in video format and featuring cancer survivors, physicians, scientists, advocates and Ronnie Andrews, the president of Clarient, […]

The Is My Cancer Different? campaign urges patients to ask their doctors a crucial question — is my cancer different? — and provides powerful information on why, when and how it could matter to their treatment choices.

Presented in video format and featuring cancer survivors, physicians, scientists, advocates and Ronnie Andrews, the president of Clarient, the personalized medicine campaign covers what indivdualized cancer treatment means, what makes a patient’s cancer different, treatment decisions, expert insights and more.

Sponsored by GE Healthcare, the campaign focuses on education, helping patients to understand how no two cancers are the same, and how molecular-level testing may identify unique characteristics that can help doctors select alternative cancer treatment options:

Advances in our understanding of cancer have proven the disease to be far more complex than originally thought. In recent years, we’ve learned each person may have different gene abnormalities that drive their cancer. This may explain why one breast cancer patient might respond well to a given therapy while another will derive little or no benefit from the same therapy. Advanced molecular-level testing may give your doctor more information on your cancer to select the therapy and medicines most appropriate for your disease. Molecular-level testing may be instrumental in helping you gain access to clinical trials that test cutting-edge treatments and medicines.

Information on the Is My Cancer Different? website will be shared with doctors, families and caregivers to create a landscape of awareness about how individualized cancer diagnostics and treatments can help drive positive outcomes.

The Is My Cancer Different? initiative has a companion campaign called Simple Acts of Sharing, which aims to get one million people to share the question in one million minutes (just over 694 days). You can find out more about Is My Cancer Different? on Facebook and Twitter.

Source: Is My Cancer Different?

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A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma

A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.

Highlight HEALTH is a new media news organization that promotes advances in biomedical research and new ideas in health and medicine.