Renowned GI Oncologist Discusses MRD Testing and the Future of Cancer Detection

Dr. Mark Lewis is a well known GI oncologist at Intermountain Health in Salt Lake City, Utah. Gifted with a passionate communication style, he has over 93,000 Twitter followers. Next month, he will live-tweet his upcoming colonoscopy.  

In this episode, Dr. Lewis joins Theral in our ongoing series on minimal residual disease (MRD) testing, a revolutionary blood test that is helping detect residual cancer causing a paradigm shift in patient management.

Dr. Lewis belongs to a pioneering group that allows oncologists to specialize in a single cancer type. He says MRD testing has transformed his own practice, describing how this “liquid biopsy” approach, previously common in hematology, is also advancing the detection of solid tumors.

“News flash,” he says in today’s show. “We were trained a certain way.  My training ended 12 years ago, and I had fantastic training.  I did my fellowship at the Mayo Clinic.  But if I practiced now the way I was trained then, my patients would be so underserved, almost to the point of malpractice.”  

Dr. Lewis considers MRD testing a key part of his own standard of care and anticipates its broader adoption among GI oncologists. He also highlights the recent findings from the GALAXY study, which shows improved survival rates for patients utilizing MRD testing, underscoring its potential to reshape GI oncology practices in the near future.

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