Dr. Shane Dormady, MD, PhD, Ocampo Family Medical Director of Oncology at El Camino Health, shares how liquid biopsy can uncover actionable mutations to support personalized treatment strategies for metastatic breast cancer, helping improve patient outcomes through targeted therapy. LiquidHALLMARK® by Lucence is an ultra-sensitive liquid biopsy test that analyzes ctDNA and ctRNA to enable tailored treatment decisions. Speak to your healthcare provider to seek advice on your options.

Lucence's liquid biopsy product is not indicated or intended as a companion diagnostic, is not indicated or intended to supplant physician medical judgment, and is not indicated or intended to diagnose and/or to identify appropriate treatment options for a particular condition or disease.

The statements made by Dr. Shane represent the expertise of Dr. Shane, specifically, and do not necessarily represent the views of Lucence as an organization. Dr. Shane is a paid consultant of Lucence.

Video Transcript: I am Dr. Shane Dormady, MD, PhD. I'm the Ocampo Family Medical Director of Oncology at El Camino Health. My inspiration to be an oncologist was really to try to take a very terrifying diagnosis and turn that from doom and gloom into inspiration and hope. And one of the amazing tools that helps me do that in this day and age is really analyzing the DNA of a person's cancer cells and thereby personalizing their treatment.

I met a patient in her 50s. She was diagnosed with widely metastatic breast cancer. She did have stable disease for approximately two years, but then she presented rather dramatically and suddenly with vision changes in her left eye, and MRI imaging revealed a new mass in her orbit. Restaging CT scans at that time showed that she had rather rapidly developed innumerable disseminated bilateral pulmonary metastases.

It is my practice whenever we see progression of a metastatic cancer to resend a liquid biopsy. What we found compared to our original molecular profiling was the presence of a PIK3CA mutation, which is readily targetable with multiple medications. So we changed her therapy to incorporate a PIK3CA inhibitor and changed her anti-estrogen therapy. And within six months, the innumerable pulmonary metastases had completely resolved. In addition, there was a regression of the mass in the orbit, and her vision normalized.

As patients get more frail with third and fourth and fifth lines of treatment, sometimes it's very difficult to send them for invasive biopsies and surgeries of tumor masses within the body. It's analysis of that sort of genetic material from the tumor cells that can lead to breakthroughs for the patient's treatment, because as we all know, our newer targeted therapies tend to have fewer side effects than the toxic infusions of chemotherapy and even immunotherapy.