NSHOA and Caris Life Sciences collaborate to establish personalized cancer care program

May 12 2014

North Shore Hematology Oncology Associates (NSHOA) and Caris Life Sciences today announced a collaboration to establish a personalized cancer care program for patients in the greater Long Island area. This program will leverage the power of Caris Molecular Intelligence™, the industry's leading comprehensive tumor profiling service, to better target therapy options based on each patient's unique cancer biology.

With the addition of this clinical molecular profiling program, NSHOA will further enhance its ability to offer patients world-class, personalized cancer care conveniently close to home. The partnership with Caris, which includes clinical support and patient and physician education, also allows for a potential research relationship.

"At NSHOA, we remain committed to providing our patients with a fully integrated cancer treatment environment that offers the world's best services and care," said Jeffrey Vacirca, M.D., FACP, and CEO/Managing Partner of NSHOA. "We believe our partnership with Caris Life Sciences helps us further deliver on this commitment, as their comprehensive molecular profiling service can identify more treatment options for our patients than any other service. NSHOA's commitment to excellence is also evident in our plans to expand our patient reach by opening our eighth location this summer in Riverhead, which will be the area's first cancer center dedicated to personalized medicine. The physicians at NSHOA understand that each individual's cancer is unique and that the 'cookie cutter' approach to cancer care is not ideal."

In recent years, molecular profiling has become a critically valuable tool for oncologists when making therapeutic decisions for patients with difficult-to-treat and/or rare and aggressive cancers. Caris Molecular Intelligence correlates the molecular data generated from a tumor with biomarker/drug associations derived from the latest clinical and scientific literature on cancer. This information is contained in a report, which outlines therapies more likely to benefit, those therapies less likely to benefit, along with applicable enrolling clinical trials for the patient. This therapy guidance is achieved through combined use of traditional pathology analysis methods (i.e., immunohistochemistry, fluorescent in situ hybridization, etc.) and more-recently developed DNA sequencing technologies (i.e., next-generation sequencing).

"At Caris, we remain keenly focused on providing oncologists and their patients the most accurate, relevant and reliable profiling information possible," said David D. Halbert, Chairman and CEO of Caris Life Sciences. "We are pleased to partner with NSHOA and its outstanding team of physicians to help further enhance and improve care in this community and help give these patients a better chance of defeating their cancer."