Cancer genetic testing, do you really understand?
2020-04-20
The occurrence and development of cancer is a process. It takes a long time from the appearance of cancer cells to the development of a threat to human life. Paying attention to some early abnormal signals, it is possible for people to find it and quickly treat it, eliminating it to the "sprouting" stage.
Early cancer generally has a higher cure rate, while the 5-year survival rate of advanced cancer is generally very low or even lack of surgery.
Therefore, if we can achieve early detection, early diagnosis, and early treatment of cancer treatment, we will be able to protect our lives.
Cancer genetic testing is to determine whether a patient carries mutations in genes related to the onset of hereditary tumors through genetic testing, to make a genetic diagnosis of hereditary tumors, to help us detect cancer risks early!
Genetic testing is of great significance to the prevention of cancer. Is it helpful for the treatment of cancer?
Genetic testing can accurately guide the use of targeted drugs, thereby greatly improving the treatment effect.
There is often such a conversation in the circle of patients: "A person in the circle of patients is non-small cell lung cancer. He is using a certain targeted drug, and it is now well controlled. Can mothers also take lung cancer?
"What is the specific situation of the patient? Have you done genetic testing before?"
"Genetic test ???? How to do it? Can medicine be used if not done?"
It can be seen that genetic testing is critical to the rational use of targeted medications. Why can genetic testing guide targeted medications? Let me talk about why cancer, targeted drugs, and genetic testing are tied together.
The essence of cancer is genetic mutation
To explain this problem, we must start with the cancer itself. The process of cancer is probably: the cell children are doing their own jobs, but because of the long-term smoking of dad's second-hand smoke / eating the sewage oil of the Sanwu restaurant / roadside stalls, normal cells continue to suffer from these bad Stimulated, when unhappy, it mutated into cancer cells with great lethality. It also split a large number of its partners and captured the human body. This is the process of genetic mutations that cause cancer.
Targeted medicine is a good medicine for mutated genes
The birth of targeted drugs has brought the gospel to cancer patients. It can be known from the word "targeting": targeted drugs are targeted at carcinogenic sites (gene fragments), and the drugs are designed to work against this target only, so that they will not appear as "kill the enemy one" like chemotherapy. Thousands, self-destructive 800 "situation. Compared with chemotherapy, the treatment is generally better and has fewer side effects.
Targeted drugs, not effective for every patient
It is precisely because most cancers are caused by gene mutations, and the mutation genes of each patient are very different, so the sensitivity to targeted drugs is also very different. Many patients use very expensive targeted drugs according to past experience or diagnosis and treatment guidelines, but the tumor has not been effectively controlled. This situation is very many, really "lost his wife and collapse soldiers."
Therefore, the first step in treatment must use genes as clues to find the mutant gene of the tumor, so that the patient can get the correct drug treatment and achieve the best treatment effect! This critical step is cancer genetic testing.
Genetic testing is to predict the effect of drugs
Genetic testing can greatly increase the accuracy of each patient's drug selection. Before selecting a drug, first examine the patient's genes to see if there are reported drug target genes in the patient's body.
If there is a target gene, then the possibility of patients being sensitive to drugs will be greatly increased. For example, we know that liver cancer is not very sensitive to chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and it is very difficult to choose chemotherapy drugs and immune targeting drugs. Some patients found that he was sensitive to a drug against lung cancer through genetic testing. Even if this anti-lung cancer drug is purchased and used, it has achieved the desired therapeutic effect.
Some liver cancer patients, after testing, found that they were not sensitive to the liver cancer treatment drug (sorafenib) recommended by the guidelines, but were sensitive to other drugs. The patient chose other anti-cancer drugs in time, saving the hundreds of thousands of treatment costs of trying sorafenib.
