Empowered Patient Podcast Developing Precision Medicines to Treat Cancer Using Clinical and Genomic Data with Dr. Todd Johnson M2GEN
Dr. Todd Johnson is the Chief Growth Officer at M2GEN an oncology-focused health informatics company. Its mission is to connect cancer patients to a precise cure using its data platform to analyze longitudinal clinical and genomic data. With a permission-based approach to data collection, M2GEN looks at the information related to the patient and from a tumor biopsy. This data analysis allows M2GEN to understand how patients respond to existing cancer treatments and gain more knowledge about the science behind cancer so that innovations and new precision medicines can be developed.
Todd elaborates, "Let's call the first the natural genome or the normal genome of a patient, also often called the germline genome. We provide information on germline as well as on the genome of the cancer. The reason why that's really important is that cancer is a disease of DNA, and it's a disease of how DNA changes over time or mutates. Those mutations are what cause a cancer to actually occur in the first place, for it to be able to evade the immune system, which is an important element of cancer progression. Then cancers can continue to mutate during the course of their life as they grow. That access to what we call serial specimens, that access to additional information about the cancer and how it continues to change from the body's normal or the patient's normal DNA, is a really important part of unlocking the mystery of what's happening here."
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