This week's Time magazine features a story of 2 women battling Glioblastoma. It talks about the shift in cancer treatment that is just beginning to take place - using genetics to treat cancer very specifically. The newest thinking is that cancers may share more in common with each other based on genetic markers as opposed to the cancer type. It may in fact be that a breast cancer might have more in common with a brain cancer and skin cancer that share the same markers than it would with another breast cancer with differing markers. This is beginning to change the way cancer is approached. We may no longer think of cancer by what area of the body it affects, but by how it is composed. This was also discussed in the Vice program I previously linked to.
The other aspect that this article raises is the inequity of care based largely on geography. Most hospitals do not have access to this sort of genetic testing or clinical trials that are based on this info. We are at least fortunate enough to live in Los Angeles where we have access to some of the best hospitals available. We have already begun several genetic tests on Jen's cancer, so that if she does become recurrent, we will at least be able to take advantage of this information.
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