Dr Joshua Ofman: Early Detection of Cancer Is Vital to the Progression of Oncology Care

GRAIL has generated enormous innovations in oncology care over the past 2 decades, and will continue this trend through exploring 1 of oncology’s biggest opportunities, early detection of cancer, said Joshua Ofman, MD, chief of Corporate Strategy and External Affairs at GRAIL Inc.

Transcript

How does GRAIL delineate what works and what doesn’t work when it comes to formulating strategies for improving oncology care?

We've made enormous progress in oncology over the last 2 decades. We've developed novel therapeutics, innovative approaches, and molecular diagnostics are now playing an increasing role in cancer. As we've looked at the opportunities to improve cancer care, early detection of cancer seems to be 1 of the biggest opportunities. So, as we've strategically thought about this new technology that GRAIL’s developed using circulating DNA and evaluating an individual's DNA, that's circulating in the blood to look for cancer signals, the opportunity we saw before us was in early cancer detection. Too many cancers are simply detected too late, where outcomes are poor and that's causing an enormous burden in this country that's both human and economic around cancer. So, by early detection, and providing something simple like a blood test for the broad population of screening eligible patients, we think this can be a game changer for how we could approach cancer control and early cancer detection.