Hereditary Cancer Testing: Prostate Cancer

July 10, 2020 by

Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in men in the United States, behind only lung cancer, according to the American Cancer Society. Cancer of the prostate is a serious disease, but most men diagnosed with prostate cancer do not die from it – early detection and personalized treatment saves lives. Doctors currently use tests, such as prostate-specific antigen (PSA), to detect and diagnose prostate cancer, but hereditary cancer screening may hold the key to earlier diagnosis and more effective treatment.

Hereditary Cancer Testing

Some people inherit a genetic mutation from their mother or father. This damaged gene puts them at greater risk for developing certain forms of cancer, including prostate cancer. In fact, hereditary prostate cancer accounts for 5 to 10 percent of all prostate cancer. Having a brother or father with prostate cancer more than doubles a man’s risk for having the disease. Hereditary cancer testing helps men understand their inherited risk of developing cancer within their lifetime. This type of testing can also help reduce or eliminate unnecessary prostate biopsies completely in men suspected of having prostate cancer.

Hereditary cancer testing works by looking for specific changes, or mutations, in specific genes, chromosomes, and proteins. These mutations can change the way the gene works; in some cases, gene mutations can cause the uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells that characterize cancer.

Most commonly, hereditary cancer testing for prostate cancer looks for mutations in BRCA2 and BRCA1 genes, and in other genes associated with prostate cancer.

Hereditary Cancer Testing is Gaining Traction as a Way to Provide Earlier Diagnosis and More Effective Treatment for Prostate Cancer

While hereditary cancer testing can help inform treatment and management approaches to prostate cancer, genetic testing of men for prostate cancer is relatively uncommon, largely because of inconsistent guidelines covering the testing and challenges in implementing genetic counseling services. There is a lot of confusion regarding when men should undergo hereditary testing for prostate cancer, the genes that should be tested, understanding the impact genetic results will have on personalized treatment programs, and the effect hereditary testing for prostate cancer can have for men and their families.

Healthcare professionals and genetic testing companies are working hard to change that, though, and are making advances to bring hereditary cancer testing for prostate cancer to the men who need it. A group of healthcare professionals recently published key recommendations in Journal of Clinical Oncology, for example. The group, made of oncology, urology, genetic counseling, primary care, and Veterans Affairs experts along with patient stakeholders, strongly endorsed genetic testing in men with metastatic (spreading) prostate cancer to help guide treatment and to determine the patient’s eligibility in clinical trials. They also recommended this type of testing to screen men whose family history suggests an increased risk of prostate cancer and other types of cancer.  

 The researchers also addressed the impact hereditary cancer testing can have on the treatment of prostate cancer in its early stages. The group recommended BRCA-2 testing for screening and for helping men and their doctors make decisions about treating early-stage prostate cancer.

The researchers also reviewed cancer screening strategies, such as the age men should begin screening for prostate cancer and which genes to test. The group recommended testing BRCA2 and another gene, HOXB13, for screening and early detection. Furthermore, the panel recommended that BRCA2 carriers begin PSA testing early; doctors may recommend early screenings beginning at age 40 or about 10 years prior to the youngest prostate cancer diagnosis in the patient’s family.

Because hereditary testing may uncover inherited cancer risk, the researchers also discussed genetic testing for both male and female relatives of those men who test positive for genetic mutations, depending on the patient’s family history of cancer and other factors.

Hereditary cancer testing for prostate cancer is growing increasingly common because of the important role it plays in the screening, diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer.

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Frank Magliochetti owes his professional success to his expertise in two areas: medicine and finance. After obtaining a BS in pharmacy from Northeastern University, he stayed on to enroll in the Masters of Toxicology program. He later specialized in corporate finance, receiving an MBA from The Sawyer School of Business at Suffolk University. His educational background includes completion of the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School and the General Management Program at Stanford Business School. Frank Magliochetti has held senior positions at Baxter International, Kontron Instruments, Haemonetics Corporation, and Sandoz. Since 2000, he has been a managing partner at Parcae Capital, where he focuses on financial restructuring and interim management services for companies in the healthcare, media, and alternative energy industries. Last year, he was appointed chairman of the board at Grace Health Technology, a company providing an enterprise solution for the laboratory environment. Most recently; Frank was appointed Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Designer Genomics International, Inc. The Company has accumulated a growing body of evidence that highlights a link between alterations in the immune and inflammatory systems and the development of chronic human disease. The Company is visionary and has established itself as a leader in the field of inflammatory and immune genetic DNA and RNA biomarkers that play a causative role in debilitating conditions, such as atherosclerosis/heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD) and cancer.
A proprietary state-of-the art data mining bioinformatics program, called ‘cluster analysis’ will be used to measure disease development susceptibility with potential for earlier diagnosis and intervention. The company is developing a healthcare program based on its proprietary genetic panels that will allow people to be their own healthcare advocate and take an active role in their health status as well as longevity.

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Mr. Frank Magliochetti MBA
Managing Partner
Parcae Capital
www.parcaecapitalcorp.com
www.frankmagliochetti.com

Sources

https://www.cancer.org/cancer/prostate-cancer/about/key-statistics.html#:~:text=Deaths%20from%20prostate%20cancer,do%20not%20die%20from%20it.

https://www.mskcc.org/cancer-care/risk-assessment-screening/hereditary-genetics/genetic-counseling/inherited-risk-prostate

https://www.cancer.org/cancer/prostate-cancer/causes-risks-prevention/risk-factors.html

https://ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/JCO.20.00046

Filed Under: Featured, Genetic Screening, Healthcare Innovations, Hereditary Cancer Testing, News, Trends Tagged With: , , ,

Using Blockchain Tech in Healthcare

October 1, 2019 by


Healthcare: Ready for Blockchain Technology

Healthcare requires prompt access to confidential patient information – lives can sometimes depend on it. Easy access comes at a price, though, as easily accessible information puts patient privacy and hospital data at risk. Blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize healthcare by providing access to secure, accurate information.
Health information technology is becoming more crucial to the healthcare system, as doctors and nurses now spend more time typing than talking to patients, according to a study by Mayo Clinic. Health information technology is also important to patients who go to different practitioners and specialists who may not have access to the electronic healthcare records (EHR) system their primary physicians may use. Lack of access to health records can lead to repeat lab work, dangerous drug interactions, and more. Blockchain can help eliminate unnecessary repeat lab work, manage medications from different prescribers, and provide a patient’s vaccination history.  Access to healthcare information is also essential for insurance providers and researchers. Many are turning to blockchain.

What exactly is blockchain?
A very succinct history of the platform; An unknown person or group calling itself Satoshi Nakamoto started blockchain technology in 2009, it was started as a way to move the digital currency, bitcoin. In the years since, the uses for blockchain have expanded to exchange other types of digital assets, such as data.
Blockchain is an activity log that is tamper-proof, time-stamped and shared across a network of computers. Each transaction going into the log, or central database, is enclosed in a block and linked in chronological order to create a public chain, hence the name “blockchain.”
The blocks cannot be deleted, changed or otherwise modified, which means that blockchain creates an indelible write-once-read-only record that a transaction occurred.

Blockchain has three main components:

1.  Digital transactions – the information or digital asset stored in the blockchain
2.  Distributed network – a decentralized peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture featuring “nodes” of participants, each of whom stores a copy of the blockchain and is authorized to validate and certify any digital transactions on the network
3.  Shared ledger – the participants record ongoing transactions in a ledger shared by all the members, who verify the transactions using algorithms; the transaction is added to the record after a majority of members validate it

How Blockchain Technology can Improve Healthcare
Information management is one of the largest problems facing healthcare today. Spread across multiple and sometimes-inaccessible systems, information may not be available when needed most; unfettered access to this information can be a security risk. Blockchain could change all that by creating a decentralized system accessible to only those who hold the right keys.
The lack of a central administrator creates transparency, in that no single individual or organization can change the information, as could happen if the information were to live in the physical memory of one system. Furthermore, all of the members of the blockchain remain in control of their transactions and information.
Each member connected to the blockchain has two keys – a public key, which acts as a visible identifier, and a secret private key. One must have the private key to unlock a member’s identity and see what information on the blockchain is relevant to that member’s profile. This cryptographically links the two keys in such a way that only those who have the secret private key can identify the member.

As healthcare institutions provide services to patients, they track clinical information in their existing health IT systems. The institution then use application programming interfaces (APIs) to direct the patient’s public (non-identifiable) ID and standard data fields to the blockchain, where the blockchain stores each transaction by the patient’s public ID. Computer software processes the incoming transactions to make them searchable.
Healthcare institutions and other organizations can use APIs to query the blockchain directly to view non-identifiable patient information, such as age, gender and medical condition. Analysis of the information gained from these queries can lead to new insights into healthcare.

Patients who wish to share their identity with healthcare organizations may do so by providing their private keys, which allows the healthcare organizations to unlock patients’ data. The data remains unidentifiable to those without the private key.

Today, most healthcare organizations rely on health information exchanges (HIEs) and other methods of centralized data aggregation to gather wide scale health data. Blockchain creates a decentralized standardized method, which ensures accountability and easy access. The structure of blockchain offers a unique combination of access scalability, security, and data privacy that can facilitate the sharing and security of healthcare information. Many more uses will unfold for blockchain technology in all aspects of healthcare, research, laboratory management, record keeping, accountability, Q.A., and even insurance.

To View Frank Magliochetti Press Releases Please CLICK HERE

Frank Magliochetti owes his professional success to his expertise in two areas: medicine and finance. After obtaining a BS in pharmacy from Northeastern University, he stayed on to enroll in the Masters of Toxicology program. He later specialized in corporate finance, receiving an MBA from The Sawyer School of Business at Suffolk University. His educational background includes completion of the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School and the General Management Program at Stanford Business School. Frank Magliochetti has held senior positions at Baxter International, Kontron Instruments, Haemonetics Corporation, and Sandoz. Since 2000, he has been a managing partner at Parcae Capital, where he focuses on financial restructuring and interim management services for companies in the healthcare, media, and alternative energy industries. Earlier this year, he was appointed chairman of the board at Grace Health Technology, a company providing an enterprise solution for the laboratory environment.

Mr. Frank Magliochetti MB
Managing Partner Parcae Capital
www.parcaecapitalcorp.com
www.frankmagliochettinews.com

Filed Under: Blockchain Technology, Featured, Healthcare Innovations, News Tagged With: , ,

Healthcare: Precision Medicine Has Arrived

September 20, 2019 by

Will Precision Medicine Become Commonplace?

Will precision medicine become commonplace?

Precision medicine is a relatively new and powerful approach to medical care. Given its current growth rate and potential, precision medicine will likely be commonplace very soon.

Medicine is not always a one-size-fits-all solution – what works for one patient may not work at all for another. Individual differences in biology, environmental factors, and lifestyle may play a role in the risk of disease, affect symptoms, and even influence how well treatment works.

Treatments that shrink tumors or alleviate symptoms of arthritis in some patients, for example, are not always effective for other patients. Precision medicine aims to overcome the influences of biology, environment and lifestyle by matching the right treatments with the right patients.

Precision medicine involves the use of extensive medical testing that identifies unique differences in a patient’s condition, followed by the development of a treatment plan specific to that patient. In other words, doctors will run tests to identify unique characteristics that might make a patient more susceptible or resistant to certain diseases or treatments, and then create personalized treatment plans for each patient.

Precision medicine allows researchers and prescribers to predict which treatments and prevention strategies will work best to treat diseases in which groups of people. In contrast, the one-size-fits-all approach uses treatments and disease strategies designed for the average person.

Past, Present and Future of Precision Medicine

While the term “precision medicine” is relatively new, the concept of providing patient-specific treatment has been around for decades. For example, doctors perform blood tests to match patients with the right type of blood; they have been doing this since the early 1900s.

The advent of modern personalized medicine began about 20 years ago, when oncologists began using targeted therapy to treat HER-2 positive breast cancer. Precision medicine got a boost in 2015 with the introduction of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Precision Medicine Initiative. NIH introduced the initiative in hopes of moving “the concept of precision medicine into clinical practice.” In other words, the initiative intends to make precision medicine commonplace.

The targeted, personalized approach already has a significant effect on many areas of medicine, including genomics that studies genes and their function, medical devices, and laboratory testing. Patients already benefit from precision medicine, especially patients with cancer. Doctors can use genetic testing to determine if a patient is at high risk for developing certain kinds of cancer, for example. When tests show that a person has a higher risk of cancer, a doctor can suggest ways to lower that risk. Cancerous tumors also provide genetic information that helps doctors develop more effective personalized treatment plans.  

The Precision Medicine Initiative has helped spur the commercial growth of precision medicine. The number of commercialized lab tests, known as predictive biomarker assays, is increasing dramatically. Predictive biomarker assays help doctors, pharmaceutical researchers and manufacturers predict the effectiveness of a treatment in any given patient group. These tests also help classify patients’ unique characteristics, which allow researchers and doctors to come up with the safest, most effective treatment for those specific patients.

Advancements in genome sequencing, an increase in consumer-focused healthcare, and innovations in healthcare information technology (IT) and connectivity have fueled explosive growth in the precision medicine market. Market Watch reports the value of the global precision medicine market at USD 47.43 billion in 2019, and projects the market will grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 12.3 percent to reach a net market size of USD 119.90 billion in 2025.

Precision medicine will also stimulate further research exploring the genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors that influence the development of disease and response to treatment. This research will likely bring about innovations that make precision medicine commonplace in clinical medicine.

SOURCES

Frank Magliochetti News

Frank Magliochetti News will be centered around reporting on trends, innovations, and news in the healthcare and bio/pharma industries.

Frank Magliochetti News is the latest in a growing network of online publications by Frank.

I’m please we have released Frank Magliochetti News, with so much going on it is my hope that Frank Magliochetti News will shed light on current, relevant, healthcare and pharma industry topics and innovations .  Please take time to head to my personal and corporate sites for news and information.
Earlier this year, Frank was appointed chairman of the board at Grace Health Technology, a company providing an enterprise solution for the laboratory environment.

Earlier this year, Frank was appointed chairman of the board at Grace Health Technology, a company providing an enterprise solution for the laboratory environment.

Frank Magliochetti owes his professional success to his expertise in two areas: medicine and finance. After obtaining a BS in pharmacy from Northeastern University, he stayed on to enroll in the Masters of Toxicology program. He later specialized in corporate finance, receiving an MBA from The Sawyer School of Business at Suffolk University. His educational background includes completion of the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School and the General Management Program at Stanford Business School. Frank Magliochetti has held senior positions at Baxter International, Kontron Instruments, Haemonetics Corporation, and Sandoz. Since 2000, he has been a managing partner at Parcae Capital, where he focuses on financial restructuring and interim management services for companies in the healthcare, media, and alternative energy industries. Earlier this year, he was appointed chairman of the board at Grace Health Technology, a company providing an enterprise solution for the laboratory environment.

Mr. Frank Magliochetti MBA
Managing Partner
Parcae Capital
www.parcaecapitalcorp.com
www.frankmagliochettiNews.com


Filed Under: Featured, Healthcare Trends, Medicine, News Tagged With: , ,

Is Healthcare Becoming an IT Business?

July 24, 2019 by

Healthcare is Becoming an Information Technology Business

Frank Magliochetti declares that; Health information technology now plays an important role in patient care, payment and research, but it wasn’t always this way. Today’s health information technology represents an evolution in record keeping within the healthcare industry. In 1924, the American College of Surgeons adopted the Minimum Standard Document to ensure the recording of a complete case record that included identifying data, chief complaint, personal and family history, physical examinations, laboratory results and x-rays.

In the 20th Century, those records were written by hand and paper copies were generally stored on or offsite, unless required for a hospitalization, doctor visit or research. Sharing patient information with even one consultant or payer typically meant long hours at the copying machine to create thick envelopes filled with data that could take a substantial amount of time to sort; sharing only pertinent information with multiple parties was next to impossible.

Computers and the internet heralded the information age and electronic health records (EHR), which allowed the mass sharing and analysis of data in an instant and without cumbersome and costly paper. In 2004, President George W. Bush created the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC), which now synchronizes HIT in the U.S. healthcare sector. Passed as part of the larger American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act created incentives to use health care information technology.

Each of these events paved the way to today’s already robust and rapidly growing information technology business. HITECH seems to have worked – as of 2017, 86 percent of office-based physicians had adopted an EHR and 96 percent of all non-federal, acute care hospitals had a certified health IT department or person, according to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.

Today’s HIT Business

To meet the growing demand on the clinical side, hundreds of healthcare IT software and service companies have sprung up across the country. Healthcare IT Skills lists more than 350 such companies, including EHRs, consulting firms, medical device providers, population health, revenue cycle management, analytics, and more.

Healthcare information technology (HIT) merges electronic systems with healthcare to store, share and analyze patient information. The advanced technology also integrates with practice management software to improve office functions that lead to better patient care. HIT now features patient portals that provides patients with access to their medical history, allows them to make appointments, message their practitioner, view bills and even pay bills online. HIT also includes features to make practitioners’ lives easier, such as ePrescribing, remote patient monitoring, and master patient indexes (MPIs) that connects patient databases with more than one database, which allows different departments within a facility to share all of the data simultaneously. MPIs reduce the need for manual duplication of patient records for filling out claims and decrease errors involving patient information, which can result in fewer patient claim denials.

As with any disruptive technology, healthcare information technology has its drawbacks and its critics. Some complain that EHRs have led to practitioners spending more time sitting in front of a computer than talk with patients. Others bemoan the cumbersome federal regulations involved. The benefits of HIT, however far outweigh its downsides.

Advantages of today’s health information technology include the ability to use big data and data analytics to manage population health manage programs effectively, for example, which is impossible with old-fashioned paper records. HIT can use data and analytics to reduce the incidence of expensive and debilitating chronic health conditions, use cognitive computing and analytics to perform precision medicine (PM) tailored to each patient’s needs, and create a means by which academic researchers to share data in hopes of developing new medical therapies and drugs. Lastly, health information technology allows patients to obtain and use their own health data, and to collaborate more fully in their own care with doctors.

Tomorrow’s HIT companies will use artificial intelligence (AI), virtual simulations, and other emerging technologies to further enhance and improve healthcare. Technologies will include digital insurance markets, price transparency tools, cloud storage that will render costly and insecure data centers obsolete, self-serve mobile applications that will eliminate forms and faxes, and centralized clearinghouses that share information across organizations and state lines. Many of these HIT applications will improve labor productivity and, given the fact that wages account for 56 percent of all healthcare spending, improvements in this area could generate significant economic gains.

Information technology will undoubtedly continue in its growth as an important and increasingly essential part of healthcare. The benefits of HIT will also continue to expand, as researchers, doctors, patients and healthcare companies integrate healthcare information technology into their everyday lives and standard business practices

To View Frank Magliochetti Press Releases Please CLICK HERE

Frank Magliochetti owes his professional success to his expertise in two areas: medicine and finance. After obtaining a BS in pharmacy from Northeastern University, he stayed on to enroll in the Masters of Toxicology program. He later specialized in corporate finance, receiving an MBA from The Sawyer School of Business at Suffolk University. His educational background includes completion of the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School and the General Management Program at Stanford Business School. Frank Magliochetti has held senior positions at Baxter International, Kontron Instruments, Haemonetics Corporation, and Sandoz. Since 2000, he has been a managing partner at Parcae Capital, where he focuses on financial restructuring and interim management services for companies in the healthcare, media, and alternative energy industries. Earlier this year, he was appointed chairman of the board at Grace Health Technology, a company providing an enterprise solution for the laboratory environment.

Mr. Frank Magliochetti MBA
Managing Partner
Parcae Capital
www.parcaecapitalcorp.com
www.frankmagliochetti.com

Filed Under: Featured, Healthcare Trends, News, Trends Tagged With: , , , , ,