Molecular Profiling, Cancer, and You

Molecular Profiling, Cancer, and You

When you get a cancer diagnosis, your doctor might, or might not, bring up the topic of molecular profiling. If s/he doesn’t, you definitely want to bring it up yourself, and here’s why: the results of that molecular profiling can significantly impact your cancer treatment options.

The conversations about this topic that I have been privy to, in both patient and clinical communities, tell me that not every doctor is aware of the full array of genetic testing options for every type of cancer. This means that patients need to fully participate in conversations about tools that put precision medicine on the table, which start with conversations about molecular profiling of your specific cancer cells. If your clinical team doesn’t bring it up, you need to bring it up.

Another conversation gets opened when you bring up molecular profiling for your cancer: the one about insurance coverage. Genetic testing is less expensive now than it was ten years ago, but it still carries a pretty hefty price tag.  There isn’t a lot of hard data on the cost of specific tests – like much of healthcare, it seems to be a case of “if we tell you, we’ll have to kill you” when it comes to price tags before purchase – but commercial tests like Caris Molecular Intelligence (formerly Target Now) (priced at $5,500) and OncInsights (priced at $4,000) are pretty steep, particularly if you have a high deductible plan. If your health plan covers testing you’re, well, covered. If not, you’ll have to pony up some serious coin to get your cancer’s molecular profile.

Here’s where the power of community in cancer comes into play. If we, as people dedicated to transforming cancer treatment – patient, clinician, policy wonk, family caregiver, or all of the above – work together to push for full coverage of molecular profiling as both a standard of care for cancer treatment, and a 100% covered service to cancer patients, we’ll start seeing some “cancer moonshot” promised become reality.

Since medicine is a science, and scientists want proven data, here are some tools to use to advocate for making molecular profiling standard, and covered. From the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in 2011, Ready or Not: Personal Tumor Profiling Tests Take Off; from the Journal of Clinical Medicine & Research in 2004, The Promise of Molecular Profiling for Cancer Identification and Treatment; from Medscape in 2014, Can Molecular Profiling Lower Cancer Costs?

If you’re dealing with a cancer diagnosis right now, and want to bring up molecular profiling with your clinical team, here are the key questions to ask:

  • What are the benefits of molecular profiling for my specific type of cancer?
  • Is my cancer tissue a good candidate for molecular profiling?
  • Will molecular profiling improve my treatment options?
  • When should my cells be tested?
  • How much will testing cost, and will my insurance cover it?
  • What if I’ve already had treatment — does molecular profiling give me any options?
  • What are the risks of testing?

The answer to your cancer lies in its DNA. Don’t miss a chance to survive, and thrive – put your DNA to work in your cancer treatment.