You know, I would say that in terms of what factors go into the analysis, I think that the prognostic value of these assays is pretty set. I think it’s very clear that if a patient has detectable ctDNA, the chance of their cancer coming back is higher than any other metric we have, higher than clinical, higher than pathologic risk. We’re looking at specificity that now is getting up to 100%...
You know, I would say that in terms of what factors go into the analysis, I think that the prognostic value of these assays is pretty set. I think it’s very clear that if a patient has detectable ctDNA, the chance of their cancer coming back is higher than any other metric we have, higher than clinical, higher than pathologic risk. We’re looking at specificity that now is getting up to 100%. So we need access to clinical trials for those patients. In the absence of those trials, the question is, patients have access to these tests today, what do we do? And there are a number of things that we do. Part of the standard of care for patients is we don’t do scans in the absence of a sign or symptom of recurrence per society guidelines. Detectable ctDNA is a sign of recurrence. And so the scans themselves are not insignificant. And we have identified patients that have had local recurrences, have had oligometastatic recurrences, both that can be treated with curative intent, and then certainly early identification of asymptomatic metastatic recurrence. And so I’d say that today, one really important thing to factor in is when patients are getting these tests, not to discount the fact that we really do need scans. And MRD, molecular residual disease, is only if a patient has detectable ctDNA and no evidence of cancer recurrence you need the scans to really identify MRD.
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