A NEW DISCOVERY MAY LIE JUST BELOW THE SURFACE
Explore How TRK FUSION CANCER
and Genomic Testing May Impact Patients
LEARN ABOUT
TRK FUSION CANCER
SO YOU CAN SHARE THIS
KNOWLEDGE WITH PATIENTS
As a health advocate, you play a vital role in educating patients on their disease and their options. This site discusses TRK fusion cancer and offers you important tools that you can share with patients, so they understand their disease and get the right care.
PRECISION MEDICINE, GENOMIC TESTING,
AND TRK FUSION CANCER
Each person’s cancer diagnosis is different. Yet, with traditional cancer medicine, patients have been treated the same.
Today, there is a shift toward precision medicine, allowing doctors to offer more individualized treatments to many patients. Precision medicine takes into account genes, lifestyle, and environment to tailor a treatment approach that makes sense for that person.
With this, genomic DNA changes that may
be driving the growth
of a tumor. cancer testing is also becoming more common. This type of testing can identify the genomic alteration(s) that may have caused the cancer.
Different testing methodologies can be used to detect TRK fusion cancer:
Next-generation sequencing (NGS)
provides a comprehensive view of a large number of genes and may identify NTRK gene fusions as well as other actionable genomic alterations.
Immunohistochemistry (IHC)
uses antibodies to detect the presence of a protein in a given sample.
Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH)
is a laboratory technique used to look at specific pieces of the DNA binding to fluorescent probes, which “light up” when viewed under a microscope. In this test, one alteration lights up at a time.
Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR)
is a multi-step process that makes many copies of a specific DNA segment to identify known translocation partners and breakpoints, but can only detect a limited number of alterations, out of many.
BENEATH THE SURFACE,
TRK FUSION CANCER IS DIFFERENT
Some genomic changes tend to cause tumors in certain areas of the body. In TRK fusion cancer, the genomic change (NTRK gene fusion) can cause cancer to begin in a different part of the body, depending on the patient.
Patients are likely to understand their cancer in terms of the site or location, such as lung or colon cancer. Having TRK fusion cancer doesn’t change their original diagnosis; it just means that a genomic abnormality (NTRK gene fusion) that can occur in multiple sites in the body is the driver of their tumor.
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER, SO SHARE THE WEALTH
Access our educational resource materials that can help patients understand their disease.
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