Individualized and innovative cancer care
Precision medicine is an approach to care that may be used for certain types of cancer, such as breast cancer, colorectal cancer, lung cancer and others. With this approach, doctors use lab tests to look for genes, proteins and other substances (sometimes referred to as biomarkers) that help them better understand your particular type of cancer.
Precision medicine can help make diagnoses more accurate and inform what treatment options might be most effective.
How precision medicine works
If precision medicine is right for you, we evaluate samples of your blood or tissue, or both, through a process called next-generation gene sequencing. The goal is to pinpoint abnormalities in genes, proteins or other substances that are causing cancer cells to grow and spread. We then determine the cancer treatments that are most likely to work based on those abnormalities.
Your treatment plan may include:
- Chemotherapy, which uses drugs to destroy cancer cells
- Radiation therapy, which uses intense energy beams to eliminate cancer cells
- Targeted therapies, drugs that interfere with specific molecules in cancer cells to prevent them from growing
- Immunotherapy, an innovative treatment that trains your immune system to identify and fight cancer cells
- Current cancer drugs not typically used for a particular diagnosis (off-label use)
- New cancer drugs only available through clinical trials
At MultiCare, we continuously evaluate your treatment to ensure you receive the right dose of a drug or therapy at the right time, adjusting the dosage as needed to minimize side effects.