Dr. He on the Future of Precision Medicine in GI Malignancies

Aiwu Ruth He, MD, PhD, associate professor of medicine, Georgetown-Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses the future of precision medicine in gastrointestinal (GI) malignancies.

Precision medicine will gradually mature in this space in the next 5 to 10 years, says He. Biomarker testing is opening up options for the treatment of GI malignancies, which puts a greater importance on molecular testing for patients, says He. To support this effort, He encourages patients to get molecular profiling done, so that data can be collected and used for therapeutic decisions. There are multiple profiling companies, such as Caris Life Sciences and Foundation Medicine, which both have commercially available tests.

He says that in the future, more will be known about tumor evasion, so finding targets to overcome it and induce durable responses in more patients with GI cancers will be possible.