Dr Tiago Biachi Discusses Precision Medicine Advancements in Solid Tumors

Precision medicine allows oncologists to have a better understanding of tumor type, behavior, and mechanism resistance, to provide a patient with the right treatment at the right time, says Tiago Biachi de Castria, MD, PhD, associate member in the Department of Gastrointestinal Oncology at Moffitt Cancer Center.

He presented on the topic of “Precision Medicine Developments in Solid Tumors" at our recent Institute for Value-Based Medicine^® event in Tampa, Florida.

Transcript

Can you provide an overview of what your topic was about on the significance of precision medicine in solid tumors?

Of course. So, in other words, this is precision oncology; this is a fascinating topic. We're doing a great job, and this is about tumor categorization. So now, we were able to define not only gene sequencing, but we were able to go deeper and analyze tumor RNA expression, protein expression, metabolism, profile of methylation, and microbiomes. By doing that, we have a better sense of what kind of a tumor, tumor behavior, and mechanism resistance. And by doing that, we can offer the right treatment for the right patient at the right time.

What were some of the methods and key metrics used to assess your findings?

I might be biased because I'm a GI [gastrointestinal] medical oncologist, but I used in my presentation a couple examples in colorectal cancer, for example, which is one of my fields that I'm more focused on here at Moffitt. And I used a couple of trials to show how we could translate precision oncology with all these methods in the better treatments and consequently, in better outcomes to our patients. And we discussed about how we can implement precision oncology in more trial designs to try to expedite drug development in oncology.