Tami Boehmer describes herself as a cancer thriver. Her blog notes that she is also a wife, mother, and author. It is obvious from her writings (she is the author of Miracle Survivors), that during her fight with breast cancer Tami wouldn't take "no" for an answer. Tami wrote about her ongoing saga in a recent note to Rational Therapeutics.

I just picked up my PET scan results. Every lesion is decreasing in uptake, and this after only three treatments! I was so nervous because I've been experiencing a little pain and pressure. I cried when I read it because this is the best scan I've had in years! Usually I hear it's either stable or progressing.

What makes this news even sweeter is the struggle that came before this. Terrible news about progression in my peritoneal cavity, then yet again my treatment not working, a painful biopsy, then insurance denying the first line of treatment the chemosensitivity assay recommended. Thank goodness, one of the options, Cytoxan (what I'm on), was approved.

The people at Rational Therapeutics were awesome, especially Shari Burt, who expedited getting our results back as soon as possible. I was at a critical juncture in my treatment and needed to find a chemo that would work and fast! She was also amazingly helpful to me when I learned that my insurance denied the first line of treatment the test recommended (Gemzar and Cisplatin/Carbolatin). She helped gather more than 20 studies/articles for me proving that it was a viable and helpful combination, and listened to me with empathy and patience. My hope is that this will be approved so I'll have another treatment to fall back on if needed.

I decided I could not wait for the appeal process to get chemo, so I asked my doctor to start me on Cytoxan, which was down the list. But it worked! I was so relieved to finally get some good news. I was afraid I would be one of those people I see who fails one treatment regimen after another until the cancer and treatment side effects kill them.

I highly recommend getting tested by Rational Therapeutics. Otherwise I'd be on a treatment that most likely wasn't going to work - again. I hope it gains wider acceptance so more patients can benefit.  

"Medical oncologists have long pursued methods that can match patients to available therapies," said Dr. Robert Nagourney lead investigator. "This study confirms the ability of a laboratory test to accurately predict drug activity for individual patients."

The article, titled "Functional Profiling to Select Chemotherapy in Untreated, Advanced or Metastatic Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer," describes results achieved in patients who received first-line chemotherapy based on their individual ex-vivo analysis.  

Using only FDA-approved, standard lung cancer drugs available to all oncologists, this process of laboratory selection provided a 64.5 percent response rate - more than double the national average of 30 percent. More importantly, the median overall survival of 21.3 months was nearly two-fold longer than the best results of 13.5 months reported for non-assay based standard treatments. Strikingly, among the Stage IV patients, there are several who remain alive approaching eight years since diagnosis.

"These results suggest that laboratory selection of chemotherapy can change the natural history of this lethal disease," said Dr. Nagourney.     

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