NCI has selected Exact Sciences Corp.’s testing laboratory in Phoenix, AZ to participate in the ComboMATCH clinical trials, an NCI-funded precision medicine initiative. As a ComboMATCH-designated lab, Exact Sciences will use its new OncoExTra test to analyze tumor tissue and paired normal blood samples from patient participants and uncover the specific abnormalities in a patient’s tumor that may be most effective to treat.
How’s this for a paradox: The better cancer centers become at keeping patients alive, the more expensive cancer care becomes. This brutal tradeoff hits harder in rural areas, where the cancer burden is higher and the investigator and clinical trial representation is lower.
