Dr. Schwartzberg on the Use of Myriad Genomic Testing in Cancer Care

Lee S. Schwartzberg, MD, FACP, chief of Medical Oncology and Hematology at the Renown Institute for Cancer and professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of Nevada, discusses the utilization of genomics in cancer care.

Myriad is improving care through the development of different tools to examine the combination of genomic profiles of patients with cancer, Schwartzberg says. Tests have been designed to examine genomic alterations, individual genes, broader genomes, and more, which are combined to determine a homologous recombination deficiency (HRD) score, Schwartzberg explains. HRD scores can dictate clinical decisions. This practice has already been used in ovarian cancer, and it is expected to expand to other disease spaces, Schwartzberg adds.

Additional genomic testing, known as genomic profiling, genomic expression, or genomic classifiers, examines the expression of certain genes to create a model that can predict prognosis or response to certain therapies, Schwartzberg explains. For example, a patient with a clinically high-risk tumor could be determined to have a genomically low-risk tumor, and that would dictate treatment decisions, Schwartzberg concludes.