What does personalized endometrial cancer care mean exactly? Dr. Joshua Cohen defines personalized medicine and explains how factors such as a patient’s cancer stage, tumor grade, biomarker testing results, and overall health all work together to shape a patient’s treatment plan.
Dr. Joshua G. Cohen is a board-certified gynecologic oncologist and Medical Director of the Gynecologic Cancer Program at the City of Hope Orange County. Learn more about Dr. Cohen.
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Transcript
Katherine:
Dr. Cohen, how do you define personalized treatment for endometrial cancer?
Dr. Josh Cohen:
I think personalized treatment is dependent on, again, the tumor itself, the stage, the grade, the biomarkers that we’ve talked about. And it’s also dependent on the patient and what her wishes are. Again, an 89-year-old patient with diabetes and congestive heart failure, there’s a different discussion that we have regarding risk-benefit in shared decision-making than in a person who’s 53 and otherwise healthy. And so, personalized treatments are based on not only the signatures in the tumor, but what’s going on in the patient’s life, what other medical issues they have because all of these medical issues are impacted by each other.
Meaning that the drugs that we use to treatment cancer may impact these other conditions. So, I think personalized medicine is making a good decision based on someone’s stage and grade of tumor, the molecular signatures or biomarkers in the context of their overall healthcare and the other medical maladies that they’re dealing with.