Improving the Odds with Molecular Profiling
More people are beating cancer today than ever before. Research shows that half of all people diagnosed with cancer will live with their disease for more than 10 years – an all-time high in the history of cancer treatment.3 Forty years ago, women with breast cancer had a 40 percent chance of surviving 10 years post-diagnosis. Now, women have an estimated 78 percent chance of surviving at least a decade. Similarly, the 10-year survival for men with testicular cancer has improved from 69 to 98 percent since the 1970s. For those diagnosed with malignant melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, the 10-year survival rate has jumped from 46 to an astounding 89 percent.4
Some studies estimate that after an initial treatment fails to produce a response, as many as 95 percent of cancer patients will not respond to the next treatment suggested by conventional methods. However, increasing numbers of oncologists are taking advantage of new precision medicine tools to change the way they treat cancer. This new approach, called molecular profiling, characterizes cancers according to their unique molecular “signatures,” and not simply based on the origin of the tumor.