What New Her2 Tests Say about Personalized Medicine
This article was originally published in Start Up
Executive Summary
Traditional diagnostic tests for Her2 (the target of the drug Herceptin) have well-documented failings. In July, Monogram Biosciences launched a new Her2 test, and two months later, Genomic Health added Her2 status information to its breast cancer test. They believe that more comprehensive, multianalyte tests may better guide therapy and yield a pharmacoeconomic benefit, even at eight to 10 times the cost. These developments point to the need for a more nuanced approach to the management of cancer as a chronic disease and a more nuanced view of personalized medicine.
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How to Earn the Economic Payback Diagnostics Companies Deserve
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Her2 Testing: What's Old Is New
Since the initial approval of Herceptin ten years ago, it has become the poster child for personalized medicine. But for almost as long as the drug has been on the market there have been questions about the diagnostics used with the drug and the degree to which they correlate with clinical response. Spurred by testing guidelines in 2007, there's a new-found focus on the nitty-gritty of laboratory conduct and test concordance that could serve as a useful model for addressing the broad issues of drug-diagnostic convergence.