Faqs

FAQ's

Medical Questions

ONCONOMICS PLUS, which covers the sensitivity/resistance on conventional & biological/natural substances and CHEMOSNIP which covers the ability of the patients to activate the drugs and metabolize them properly.
Oncocount. or Oncotrace. or Oncotrail only for known and specific types of malignancies.
For the first year every trimester and then every half year
If a patient asks for additional natural substances to be tested, we can include them in Onconomics Plus or Onconomics Extracts. If additional testing for chemotherapy drugs is required, we are able to include them in the Onconomics test.
The migration from the primary tumor take place relatively early during tumor progression. Almost less than 2mm in diameter the primary tumor already spreads newly form vessels and cells that perform EMT are migrate through them to the circulation.
The isolation of CTCs can be performed with sorting methods based on Flow cytometry and avoid any noise caused by irrelevant cells. The evaluation of CTCs can reveal sensitivity and resistance to several factors in a cellular level. The application to an all organism requires the cooperation and expertise of an oncologist which have very high level of knowledge of pharmacology (Pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetic) in order to schedule dosages, timing and cycles in a patient level.
Besides the cytotoxic drugs, the monoclonal antibodies or the small molecular weight inhibitors like TKIs, we can test other substances either by a viability/cytotoxicity assay and as induction of the immune response or as inhibitors of growth factor receptors. You can introduce to us any substance you deem fit If you prefer to test these in combination we can offer also that, but it is up to the physician to specify the combination, the timing of each component and the ratio.
The onconomics and onconomics plus test study the expression of specific genes correlated with the efficacy of specific drugs on the cancer cells derived from a single patient.
ChemoSNiP provides information about DNA sequence variations (mutations) that can affect how humans develop disease or respond to chemicals, drugs and other agents.
Every RGCC test can be conducted with blood sample. Only the type of cancer can change this fact. For example, to examine glioblastoma and other types of brain cancer, only tissue is necessary in order to proceed to RGCC tests.
Yes, patients can have RGCC tests with blood sample, except from the cases of brain cancer/tumor.

The aCGH (Array comparative genomic hybridisation) test provide information about genetic abnormalities (deletions/insertions) on the tumor cells. These abnormalities can be associated with of the primary tumor.

We have many patients with lymphoma or leukemia who have proceeded to RGCC test for CTC count.

Scientific Medical Questions

Metastat tests provides this information over a period of three years Meta-analysis is conducted comparing CTCs profile and metastases profile in order to detect potent markers that are relevant with the site of relapse.
The migration from the primary tumor take place relatively early during tumor progression. Almost less than 2mm in diameter the primary tumor already spreads newly form vessels and cells that perform EMT are migrate through them to the circulation.
As the biopsy is already part of the tumor, this means that all the cells are cancerous. For that reason there is no need to search for CTC populations.
The main cells of interest in analytic platform are CTCs, which are obtained by negative selection and sorting via flow cytometer (so that we will obtain viable CTCs from a blood sample). In cases like Glioblastomas cancer cells cannot be detected in a blood sample due to blood-brain-barrier and we need a tissue sample in order to be able to proceed with the test.
There is no analysis assay that can be approved. The only test that is approved is the Cellsearch which enumerates the CTC. The analytic platform of CTCs analysis can be certified only for their accuracy and most of the platforms do, as ours does (ISO/IEC 17025:2005).