Advanced prostate cancer patients face complex testing and treatment decisions with many treatment options and little personalized evidence to guide them and their medical teams.
Brad Power
Founder, CancerHacker Lab
There is great promise for personalizing cancer treatment decisions by using new tests, such as DNA sequencing and RNA sequencing, but most patients don’t know about them, and most clinicians either don’t know about them, how to use them, or have the time to pursue them.
Prostate Cancer Lab brings together a diverse crowd of experts (super patients, researchers, computational biologists, physicians, academics, testing experts, scientists, immunologists, bioinformaticians, and pathologists) to collaborate on recommending tests, treatment strategies, and best next treatment options for individual advanced prostate cancer patients. We seek to understand the patient’s specific disease drivers and mechanisms of resistance from multiple angles and map those insights to determine good/better/best treatment options.
Our outputs include:
- Answers for the patients on their testing and treatment strategy as well as best next options
- A consumer’s guide to testing
- Guidelines for the advanced cancer patient
- A learning system for future advanced cancer patients on what works
- Collaboration across the existing cancer review boards at various hospitals and academic research cancer centers to share experience, insights, and outcomes
We see three major benefits from our unique process:
- Hope: For patients who are told, ”there’s nothing more we can do for you,” Prostate Cancer Lab offers another possible shot at a treatment option.
- Confidence: While the tests and treatments that will be discovered and prioritized may not succeed, patients and their medical teams can be better assured that what they learn will provide the best shot at a durable response.
- Learning: Everyone in the community that participates in Prostate Cancer Lab is constantly learning about the best tests, treatments, and experts in the field.