Sometimes the best evidence that a new medical technology is working is simply that doctors start depending on it. For years, the promise of molecular medicine has been that better genomic information would lead to better patient care. At Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, Vice Chair of Molecular Pathology, Sean Glenn, offers a compelling example of that promise becoming routine clinical practice.
Hematologic cancers can require information from many different kinds of genomic alterations and traditionally from multiple tests and laboratories. Glenn and his team developed a comprehensive pan-hematological assay that brings much of that information together, using both DNA and RNA to detect alterations across myeloid and lymphoid cancers. The panel targets nearly 400 genes on the DNA side and about 125 on the RNA side, while automation has helped Roswell Park achieve an average turnaround time of roughly two and a half days for the 50 to 60 tests it runs each week.
And the oncologists are depending on it. Since introducing the panel, Glenn says Roswell Park has seen “a transformation and a resurgence of clinical care” in its leukemia and lymphoma clinics. His favorite measure of success is wonderfully practical. The oncologists are no longer calling the lab every few days asking where their results are. The information simply arrives in the patient’s record, in time to help make treatment decisions.
