Following the Government’s announcement earlier this year to allocate more funding to Pharmac, including cancer treatments, Awanui Labs is increasing the biomarker testing capability at the Dunedin Hospital laboratory to meet future patient need.
Awanui Labs currently provides biomarker testing for cancer patients. However, we have already seen a lift in test volumes for pembrolizumab (triple negative breast cancer, head, and neck cancer) and cetuximab (metastatic colorectal cancer) which are the recent two tranches of cancer drugs to be funded by Pharmac.
Further increases in funding over the next four years means requests for these tests could potentially be at least five times higher on previous volumes.
Each person’s cancer has a pattern of biomarkers so the importance of this testing to patient care is very high. Biomarker testing works by collecting a sample of a patient’s cancer cells either through a biopsy, blood or bone marrow, or body fluids.
Biomarkers may be:
- Diagnostic: To help diagnose cancer, including subtyping,
- Prognostic: To forecast how aggressive a cancer is, as in the case of determining a patient’s ability to fare in the absence of treatment, and,
- Predictive: To predict how well a cancer will respond to treatment.
Awanui Labs biomarker panels for cancer involve both the Anatomical Pathology and Molecular Pathology departments in Dunedin testing the following cancers to predict responses to targeted therapies and identify the patient’s immune checkpoint inhibitors which can prevent cancer cells from being destroyed:
- Non-small cell lung cancer: EGFR, ALK, PD-L1 TPS
- Metastatic colorectal cancer: KRAS/BRAF/NRAS, HER2
- Metastatic melanoma: BRAF
- Triple negative breast cancer: PD-L1 CPS
- Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma: PD-L1 CPS
- Gastric and esophagogastric junction adenocarcinoma: MMR, HER2, PD-L1 CPS
Other cancers can also be tested for various biomarkers.
Pathology has a critical role in detecting and treating cancers with diagnoses relying on laboratory testing services every day. The testing and diagnosis enable cancer specialists to understand the type and severity of a cancer and prescribe the correct course of treatment for the patient.
Therefore, along with providing services for our current patients, we need to think ahead and plan for how we meet future demand.
Awanui Labs is liaising with Pharmac, Health New Zealand – Te Whatu Ora and Te Aho o Te Kahu (Cancer Control Agency) on this project and work is underway to ensure we meet demand as the new drug treatments are funded and become available.
As the country’s largest pathology services provider, Awanui Labs is uniquely placed to provide more biomarker cancer testing for both community and hospital patients and continue building support for the diagnosis and correct treatments for people across Aotearoa.