Lightening the cancer burden
Cancer is Australia’s leading cause of death. An extraordinary 40% of people diagnosed with cancer die within the first five years. It will take an unprecedented global and multidisciplinary effort to achieve the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) aim of eliminated suffering and death from Cancer. Genostics is at the forefront of utilising the most current technologies in the early detection, individualised diagnosis and monitoring of cancer. Please note our tests are not covered by Medicare and are only to be used as additional information to complement current recommended screening and diagnostic protocol.
Molecular diagnostics identifies disease by detecting molecules, such as DNA, RNA and proteins that are specific to the disease. The NCI focuses on the molecular diagnosis as the ‘future’ of cancer diagnostics. Specifically, the NCI expresses the future of cancer management as individualising diagnosis and treatment through the application of a molecular diagnostic test. The NCI states that in future, a simple test will analyse the biology of a patient’s cancer through the collection of a sample of patient blood. Genostics is pioneering the manifestation NCI future dreams to be current reality.
Each patient’s cancer is unique. This is the reason that two people with the ‘same’ type of cancer will respond differently to the same treatment. Cancer subtypes differentiate not only to the individual person, but also to the individual cell within the one cancer. For years, health practitioners have been battling with having to give standard treatments to treat a disease that manifests differently in each patient. Current detection methods miss the early stages of cancer entirely. Current treatment methods are based on population statistics rather than cancer biology. Current monitoring methods are reduced to a ‘wait and see’ approach.
Circulating Tumour Cells are fast being recognised as the instigators of cancer progression. These cells have been likened to Cancer Stem Cells are responsible for the formation of metastasis. Each gram of tumour tissue sheds millions of these CTCs into the blood stream each day. Most of these cells do not survive the mechanical and immunochemical environment of the blood stream. Those that do are the most aggressive and have the capacity to form a cancer in a new tissue. Importantly, current treatment is based on the analysis of the primary tumour. CTCs have a different biology to cells in the primary tumour and thus can be resistant to the treatment of choice.
Genostics offers the future of molecular medicine to patients today. We provide molecular tests that focus on early detection, on individualising diagnosis and treatment, and on monitoring treatment success. Our objectives centre on provision of excellence in diagnostic testing, on bridging the gap between the research scientist’s workbench and the patient bedside, and contributing to the furthering of cancer science and education