[gdpawel]

Sarah

Steve Jobs had his entire genome sequenced. It was reported this week that the $100,000 price tag of his testing can be done for $900 now. I hope he didn't spend all that money just to find out he had pancreatic neuroendocrine cancer and not pancreatic cancer. These cancers behave very differently. But gene sequencing is not ready for "drug selection."

Ironically, functional profiling had found out that a pancreatic cancer patient can be treated successfully with a combination of drugs commonly used to fight breast, colorectal, lung and pancreatic cancers. Will one be able to find that out by testing just for the genes (the big three, or even the next ones on the list)?

It has become routine to test breast cancer patients for the mutation conferring sensitivity to Herceptin, test lung cancer patients for the mutation conferring sensitivity to Tarceva, and the KRAS mutation to predict for Erbitux. What these "theoretical" candidates may be missing out on is some other drug or combination that would be more sensitive to their individual cancer cells, not from some population study.

Good luck in finding the next ones.

Greg