In this video, Rita Porterfield, a patient with rare blood condition Erdheim-Chester disease, describes how she was successfully treated with a therapy typically used in patients with melanoma skin cancer. That’s because Rita had a mutation in the BRAF gene, also commonly mutated in patients with melanoma.
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- As her medical oncologist, David Hyman, explains, Rita received her treatment as part of an MSK basket trial. Basket trials provide an innovative approach to clinical trials. Unlike traditional trials, which test new treatments in patients according to their disease type (breast or lung cancer, for example), basket trials take advantage of advances in molecular oncology, offering new therapies to patients according to the genetic mutations discovered through specialized molecular testing.
- Video published on 17 Nov 2014 by Memorial Sloan Kettering.
- A Faster Way to Try Many Drugs on Many Cancers, nytimes, FEB. 25, 2015.
- How Basket Trials Are Transforming Oncology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
- Watch more research videos on @DES_Journal YouTube channel.