Body Surface Area – Part II
Posted by Adrienne Choma on Tue, Jun 21, 2011 @ 11:57 AM
With all the advances in oncology and the recent focus on “Personalized Medicine,” why are pharmaceutical companies and oncologists still using this crude dosing methodology that cannot compensate for the complexities of an individual and has been proven to be woefully inadequate to ensure that patients receive optimal treatment?
In truth, it is because there have been no practical alternatives available for oncology drug dosing. In other fields of medicine, such as cardiology, treatment of epilepsy and more recently, transplantation medicine, doctors can ensure that their patients are receiving the optimal dose through a simple blood test to measure the concentration of the drug in the patient’s plasma. This practice has been around for more than forty years and is known as Therapeutic Drug Monitoring or Therapeutic Drug Management (TDM).
It seems an obvious solution; however it has only been recently that simple lab tests have become available to measure oncology drug levels in cancer patients’ blood. Saladax Biomedical is a company dedicated to the development of such assays, allowing the routine measurement of chemotherapy drugs from a simple blood test. Saladax has a portfolio of thirteen oncology drug management assays in their portfolio and the first test made available to oncologists is for 5-fluorouracil (5-FU), which is commonly used to treat colorectal cancer and other solid tumors.
Clinical studies have demonstrated that a very high percentage of 5-FU patients do not get the best dose of this drug. 40% to 60% of patients are under-dosed (which leads to less than effective treatment of the cancer and potential relapse of disease) and another 10% to 20% of patients are over-dosed (leading to excessive toxic side effects that cause treatment termination and serious impairment of quality of life). Less than 25% of patients dosed by BSA receive the optimal dose to most effectively deal with their cancer.
Now, there is a better way.....
Paul Kenny, European Key Account Manager