Foundation Medicine plans to fundamentally change the way cancer is diagnosed and treated by providing the molecular information physicians need to match therapies to conditions.
“Cancer is a genomic disease,” Steve Kafka, Ph.D., COO, points out, but until recently its primary descriptor has been its location in the body. That has spawned research focused on prostate cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer, etc. that didn’t look at the genomic causes of the disease. Zeroing in on cancer genomics is a paradigm shift.
“The important thing is to understand the molecular drivers of cancer. Therefore, our tests are comprehensive across the genome,” Dr. Kafka says. “Our approach is information-based. We want to understand each patient’s cancer at a deep molecular level, drawing on scientific and medical literature and targeted drug therapies to help researchers and physicians make the best patient-selection and treatment decisions.”
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