Foundation Medicine Joins Lung Cancer Testing Campaign

Massachusetts-based Foundation Medicine has joined forces with the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation and the Friends of Cancer Research to push individuals who suspect they have lung cancer to undergo the appropriate testing to better assess their options. The campaign, known as "Don't Guess. Test," was launched late last year and includes 16 health care advocacy organizations and Foundation, which specializes in cancer testing at the genomic level. They have been working to distribute literature to would-be patients about the benefits of genomic profiling of their lung cancers, and the potential treatments that are available. Lung cancer is the deadliest form of the disease in the United States, killing about 160,000 Americans every year. Even patients suffering from the disease in the intermediate stages have less than a one in three chance of surviving five years. Among the reasons for the disease's high rate of fatalities is few instances are diagnosed in the earliest stages, when the survival rates approach 50 percent. Bonnie Addario, who created her California-based foundation after surviving stage 3 lung cancer, noted that the primary reason for the campaign was to provide more options for patients facing a tough diagnosis. "The purpose is really to get patients tested, so they get the right drug at the right time," Addario said. "Too many times, they are put on radiation without testing, and they receive a treatment that is very toxic," while not necessarily providing therapeutic effects. "Our understanding of cancer and lung cancer specifically has changed dramatically in the last decade, from a single disease, to a diverse set of diseases defined by their underlying genomic drivers," said Vincent Miller, M.D., Foundation Medicine's chief medical officer. "The diversity of genomic alterations found to drive lung cancer and the positive outcomes commonly resulting from use of the respective targeted therapy means that lung cancer is a disease that must be addressed by a precision medicine approach, and one where a 'one-size-fits-all' standard of care is no longer appropriate." Addario said that other cancer-focused laboratories have been supportive of the campaign, and expect others to join it in the future. Takeaway: Laboratories are beginning a push for more comprehensive testing for cancer patients in order to optimize their treatment.