chemo sensitivity test

Anonymous

chemo sensitivity test

LIE

Hi, recent preliminary results...imvasive breast cancer...all i know thus far..waiting for complete bx results...scheduled for a PET scan. How can they be sure you are given the chemo drug that will be effective for your specific tumor? I came across a company that specializes in preserving your tumor so it can be used to do chemo sensitivity testing. Your doctor will know which drug will be,effective for your tumor. It is at storemytumor.com

Would hope others would go to this website to check it out...i have no connection to the site..just would like others to research more to see if is really possible to determine which chemo drug would be effective for your specific tumor.

Moderators

Dear Anira.

Welcome to the BCO community. We are sorry for your diagnosis and the concerns that brought you here but glad that you reached out. You raise good questions that you can pose to your oncologist once all of the information about your specific tumor has been collected. Once all of the results are known you will be able to discuss a plan of treatment and if chemotherapy is offered you can engage in a discussion about which drugs work best with your particular cancer. Here is a link to more information about chemotherapy at our main site. Here is a link to other resources for those Just diagnosed. Let us know how we can be of help.

The Mods

mightlybird01

Hi Anira,

sorry you have not received any answers yet, but I think this is because this company and their techniques have not yet been discussed on this site. I looked at the website and I am interested, but at the moment purely of scientific interest (I am a molecular biologist).

When I was first diagnosed, I was looking into something similar.

http://www.rgcc-group.com/tests/onconomics-plus-rg...

I actually got my oncologist to register with this company and almost ready to ship my sample. I had studied all the material, and read the scientific literature. IN the end, I decided that I would not be able to trust these results with my treatment decisions, simply because it was so new and never really been studied in clinical trials. For example for my TN, I consulted with two oncologist, both recommended AC+T. Now if I had submitted my sample to that company, and they had found my tumor would not respond to one of those chemicals, would I have actually decided to not do it? It is possible, it may not work on the tumor itself, but maybe on some of the stem cells that could form a new tumor at a distant site. Nobody knows this at this point in time. I think if I would have been in a later stage, more serious type of cancer, I would have definitely done it, just for the sake of having this type of information, but for early stage cancer, I decided it was better to trust the proven methods than embark on something like this on my own, and potentially spend a lot of money along the way.

Having said that, keeping the tumor tissue alive (I assume they will establish a cell line) or at least keep it fixed in parafine may be a good idea. With the latter, one can still do a lot of staining at some point in time and it would be much cheaper to preserve. The former (keeping a cell line alive for a long time may be VERY expensive), it could be cost prohibitive. But for a short time you would get information about your tumor that could be very valuable later on. But of course, tumors can mutate and maybe it would not be valuable information after all and you would have wasted a lot of money and mental resources on it.

These are just my thoughts to maybe get a discussion going.