HER2 Support Group Forums - View Single Post - any tumor tests to predict which chemos work better?

sarah · 02-18-2012, 08:31 AM

Hello Rich and Greg,
reading your posts is illuminating.
As for Caris, they did not approach us. One of our members whose wife with bc at age 38 was seriously ill (she died soon after sadly) and the trade off was they would come and talk and would use her tumor as an example, unfortuantely it was too late but it was the first time we had heard of this type of thing being done and of course it is an encouraging area if it works.
The distress with patients with metatasis is that they often "lose" time on drugs that don't work or don't work well enough and so as we all realize if a way to narrow done the choices to those that are more likely to work, it would be great. As you say Greg, cancer is not simple, if it was it would have been solved and certainly lots of people are working on it and there is a lot of money to be made finding drugs that work.
Obviously oncologists depend mostly on the stats that point to what has worked most of the time and follow those protocols.
Greg, I found your post on chemo-sensitive versus chemo resistant etc post particularly interesting.
I have a question for Rich and Greg: (others welcome!) when a tumor is removed, what do you consider are the ideal markers that you think should be answered?
I know in '99 they checked about 6 markers on my bc, some of which I believe today are no longer relevant but they were supposedly to show the tendancy to progression unfortunately despite the indication of possible progression, (I was DCIS but...) I was lightly treated and progression did happen so it would seem to me to be better to have the clearest picture of what could happen. I seem to ok for the moment but I'm worried about new patients and those in our group who are actively metatastic. So think about what you feel are the most important markers and please pass them on to me so that I can talk to the oncologists at the hospital where we have our meetings to find out if these are all done and if not, can they be.
thanks in advance and boy do I love that you are so informative, I only wish I could understand all of the medical terms.
Thanks guys, love you.
If you come to the south of France, you'd better look me and my husband up!
Sarah
ps these were the markers they did for me in '99:
ER, PR, Ploidy/DNA index, S-phase Fraction, MIB-1, HER2, p53

02-18-2012, 08:31 AM	#29
sarah Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: france Posts: 1,648	Re: any tumor tests to predict which chemos work better? Hello Rich and Greg, reading your posts is illuminating. As for Caris, they did not approach us. One of our members whose wife with bc at age 38 was seriously ill (she died soon after sadly) and the trade off was they would come and talk and would use her tumor as an example, unfortuantely it was too late but it was the first time we had heard of this type of thing being done and of course it is an encouraging area if it works. The distress with patients with metatasis is that they often "lose" time on drugs that don't work or don't work well enough and so as we all realize if a way to narrow done the choices to those that are more likely to work, it would be great. As you say Greg, cancer is not simple, if it was it would have been solved and certainly lots of people are working on it and there is a lot of money to be made finding drugs that work. Obviously oncologists depend mostly on the stats that point to what has worked most of the time and follow those protocols. Greg, I found your post on chemo-sensitive versus chemo resistant etc post particularly interesting. I have a question for Rich and Greg: (others welcome!) when a tumor is removed, what do you consider are the ideal markers that you think should be answered? I know in '99 they checked about 6 markers on my bc, some of which I believe today are no longer relevant but they were supposedly to show the tendancy to progression unfortunately despite the indication of possible progression, (I was DCIS but...) I was lightly treated and progression did happen so it would seem to me to be better to have the clearest picture of what could happen. I seem to ok for the moment but I'm worried about new patients and those in our group who are actively metatastic. So think about what you feel are the most important markers and please pass them on to me so that I can talk to the oncologists at the hospital where we have our meetings to find out if these are all done and if not, can they be. thanks in advance and boy do I love that you are so informative, I only wish I could understand all of the medical terms. Thanks guys, love you. If you come to the south of France, you'd better look me and my husband up! Sarah ps these were the markers they did for me in '99: ER, PR, Ploidy/DNA index, S-phase Fraction, MIB-1, HER2, p53 __________________ Last edited by sarah; 02-18-2012 at 08:49 AM..