Early-Stage Cancer Diagnosis and Trends

Conference Correspondent

In the December 18 session of the Association for Value-Based Cancer Care (AVBCC) 10th Annual Summit, a panel of experts discussed the future of early-stage cancer diagnosis and how to improve cancer screenings. This session was moderated by Stan Skrzypczak, MS, MBA, Managing Partner at 5 Prime Life Science Consulting, Inc.

Minetta Liu, MD, Oncologist at the Mayo Clinic, began the discussion by stating that there are 1.8 million diagnoses of cancer per year in the United States. Dr Liu believes stage shift can help diagnose malignancies earlier and we need a more sensitive detection of clinically relevant malignancies. Ideally, we want to identify cancer at the earliest stage possible with a single test that can detect multiple malignancies.

Girish Putcha, MD, PhD, Chief Medical Officer and Clinical Laboratory Director at Freenome, presented the challenges of cancer screenings, stating one size does not fit all. There are over 100 types of cancer and there is currently no test in development that is universal to all cancers.

Kathryn Lang, MD, Vice President of Outcomes and Evidence at Guardant Health, provided a health economics perspective. Dr Lang said when discussing how to model multi-cancer testing for economic performance, we need to consider effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, simplifying assumptions, and what comparable models already exist.

J. Leonard Lichtenfeld, MD, MACP, Former Deputy Chief Medical Officer of the American Cancer Society, said although early detection and prevention is an important factor in saving lives, it is not the number 1 factor. Improved patient awareness, new treatments, and determining when screening is the most effective, are all ways to make an impact on outcomes.

Register for the AVBCC Summit to gain access to the archived 10-week agenda that is packed with timely insights and no-holds-barred debates that you need to understand in today’s cancer care ecosystem and trends for the future.

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