Natera

What is Natera? 

History and how we collaborate with natera using their Signatera CLIA approved test

You will notice throughout our website we stress the term CLIA (Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments)certified orapproved lab. We emphasize this point because these labs can report results directly to your medical team for evaluation and possible immediate guidance recommendations for your treatment. FibroFighters is committed to educating you about the best and most cutting–edge tools possible so your medical teams can become equally well informed about our rare and misunderstood cancer. We believe having robust patient directed programs in addition tolonger–term bench projects are both extremely critical tosupplying our community with the answers we so desperately require.Our goal is simple create longevity toallow patients to benefit from longer team projects.

Two years ago, Dr. Schadde from Rush began running a report called Signatera for colon cancer patients and hasevolved into running this same report for many of our FLC patients.Since our cancer has a high rate ofrecurrence this provides a potentially very useful tool that we can monitorpatients disease level trends.Currently Dr. Kent working with xCures is compiling data points to help determine how accurateand usefultheseresults are.We feel between this test and serum B–12 levels we canhelp cliniciansget a head start onmakingbetter and moretimelytreatment decisions.

What is the test?

Signatera is a highly sensitive and personalized molecular residual disease assay (MRD) using circulating tumorDNA (ctDNA),eachperson’s cancer is as unique as their fingerprint. Signatera is a blood test that is personalizedto each patient’s set of tumor mutations and can identify earlier thantraditionalstandard of caretools if canceris still present.Knowing this information can help you have a more informed discussion with your doctorregarding your treatment journey.

How does it work?

• By Notifying Dr. Kent we canhelpget the test ordered for you. We have not had a patient have to payout of pocket for the test. Contact: paulkentmd@fibrofighters.org
• Convenient blood draw services either in clinics or at home.
• Both tissue and blood samples are required initially to build the Signatera test. Once the test is built,only blood samples are required for the periodic follow–up tests performed to monitor for MRD
• After your test has been customized for you (about three weeks) your oncologist will receive yourresults approximately a week after you blood sample is received by the lab.

Why is this important for me to do?

• To provide peace of mindproviding you and your doctor more information sooner.
• Simply to do, just ablood test.
• See if your testing shows a strong correlation allowing you to become more confident in the results.