Who Should Consider Genomic Testing?

Cancers where there are lots of targeted treatments based on genomic alterations certainly do benefit more from genomic testing. I think one classic example is lung cancer, where there are lots of targeted agents based on your genomic profile. And so it is quite critical, for example, non-small-cell lung cancer to understand tumor genomics to make treatment decisions.

I think, being a breast oncologist, I'm very biased to breast cancer, but I think we're still early on. But I think it's always good to have an honest conversation with your oncologist about, why am I doing genomic testing? What does this mean? What information are you going to get out of it that's going to maybe have any implications on my treatment decision? So I think just knowing kind of what we're doing and what to expect when you get a result is an important first step.

And then to ask your doctor, if you find something, is it going to have a treatment implication for me now? Or is it more just so we have this information for the future? Because in truth, for a lot of my patients, it's not that I need that information, like, tomorrow. It's more so that I can understand what future treatment options there may be by understanding what genomic alterations they have.