Is there any reason to believe that submitting another sample to you would provide any additional information or possible changes in treatment protocols now that we are almost 4 months into the treatment plan?

Is there any reason to believe that submitting another sample to you would provide any additional information or possible changes in treatment protocols now that we are almost 4 months into the treatment plan? Do you suggest additional test sampling as time goes on? Would it provide us with any additional information?

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Our Answer:

We would suggest you submit another FNA and blood samples to us WHEN the patient's lymphoma relapses. Relapse of lymphoma means that the cancer develops a resistance to certain chemo drugs in use. When this happens, the relapsed cancer cells are usually different from the ones investigated in the naive status, which led to different drug response predictions to the tested drugs. Therefore, it would be better to get new tumor samples and find out what are the new preferred drugs and which of the used drugs still remain effective or became resistant for the relapsed lymphoma. However, the best scenario is to maintain clinical remission for as long a period of time so that you don’t have to order another service from us! If a second service is needed, we offer a 50% discount for returning patients.

Are patients on drug treatments when we look at the progression-free survival graph?

Yes, probably the patient would be taking some form of drug treatment when we look at the progression-free survival graph. Basically, the patients were not treatment free at the time.

How long does the media last before expiring? How long is the medium good for?

The media has a 3 month shelf life. You can check the tube and look for its expiration date as well.

For patients who already have flow cytometry, can you just run the drug sensitivity profile?

No, we cannot run a drug sensitivity-only service. Please understand our AI-based drug response prediction models require flow cytometry and PARR parameters generated from our own instrumental setting. Even if the patient already has flow cytometry results from another laboratory, we need to run flow and PARR again anyway.

If I send samples from multiple patients, do I get a discount?

No, but after the first Personalized Prediction Profile service for a given patient, all subsequent Personalized Prediction Profile services for that patient are discounted.

I have a patient with likely lymphoma/leukemia. For a blood sample, can I just submit an EDTA blood tube or do I still use the ImpriMed tubes (and if so, how many tubes and is an additional EDTA blood tube still needed with that)?