Saladax Biomedical, Inc., has announced that Saladax Biomedical Laboratories is offering a simple blood test for the personalization and optimization of 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) dosing to help oncologists improve treatment outcomes and minimize the drug’s toxic side effects. The test is called My5-FU. 5-FU is a chemotherapy drug commonly used in the treatment of many different cancer types, including colorectal, head and neck, and breast cancers.
Presently, chemotherapy dosing is based on the body surface area (BSA) formula, which was developed in 1916 and is used to calculate the surface area of a human body based on an individual’s height and weight. The use of BSA for chemotherapy dosing has been the standard practice since the introduction of the first chemotherapy drugs in the 1950s, but only due to the lack of a better means for determining the appropriate dose in an individual.
Recent clinical studies have highlighted the serious flaws of the BSA dosing method. More than 80% of colorectal cancer patients were found to have received therapeutically suboptimal dosing of 5-FU; 68% of these patients were under-dosed, jeopardizing their treatment outcomes, and 13% were overdosed, putting them at high risk of serious toxic side effects from their treatment.
My5-FU is one of a line of MyCare blood tests offered by Saladax Biomedical Laboratories. The test requires a simple venous blood draw to be performed a minimum of two hours prior to the end of a 5-FU infusion cycle. The My5-FU test results provide the oncologist information about the concentration of the drug in the patient’s blood as well as their overall systemic exposure to the drug. Based on the exposure levels, the doctor can adjust the next dose to achieve the optimal exposure level for best treatment results with minimized toxicities. Read more about the My5-FU test.
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