News Details
NCCN Biomarkers Compendium Now Available
NCCN announces the availability of the NCCN Biomarkers Compendium™–a tool developed to identify the appropriate use of biomarkers to screen, diagnose, monitor, and provide predictive and prognostic information for the treatment of patients.
FORT WASHINGTON, PA – The National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) today announces the availability of the NCCN Biomarkers Compendium™, a tool developed to identify how biomarkers are appropriately used to screen, diagnose, monitor, and provide predictive or prognostic information to ensure, ultimately, that patients with cancer have access to appropriate testing.
The tests included in the NCCN Biomarkers Compendium™ are those recommended in the NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology (NCCN Guidelines®)–the recognized standard for clinical policy in oncology and the most comprehensive and frequently updated guidelines available in any area of medicine.
Biomarker testing provides critical information needed to make certain that patients receive those treatments most likely to be effective, while avoiding possibly ineffective treatment and unnecessary side effects–an important component of personalized cancer treatment.
An accurate diagnosis is the cornerstone for the treatment of cancer; however, in this emerging era of highly targeted therapy, the correct diagnosis needs to be supplemented by critical information regarding tumor biomarkers, said Andrew D. Zelenetz, MD, PhD, Vice Chair of Medical Informatics, Department of Medicine at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Chair of the NCCN Guidelines Panel for Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. The NCCN Biomarkers Compendium will help clinicians select the appropriate tests that have been identified as clinically useful in the NCCN Guidelines.
The goal of the NCCN Biomarkers Compendium™ is to provide essential details for those biomarker uses which have been evaluated by NCCN Guidelines Panels and are recommended in the NCCN Guidelines®. Tests that measure changes in genes or gene products and which are used for diagnosis, screening, monitoring, surveillance, or for providing predictive or prognostic information are included in the Biomarkers Compendium™.
General information on appropriate methodologies for biomarker testing is provided, focusing on the biology or abnormality being measured rather than on commercially available tests or test kits. NCCN anticipates that this compendium may eventually be used by payers in much the same way the NCCN Drugs & Biologics Compendium (NCCN Compendium®) is utilized as a reference for coverage decisions.
NCCN is pleased to announce the availability of the NCCN Biomarkers Compendium, said Patricia J. Goldsmith, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. Together with the NCCN Compendium, this tool will indeed assist physicians and payors in identifying appropriate molecular testing from treatment and coverage perspectives and help them to provide the most up-to-date standard of care, based on NCCN Guidelines.
Currently, the NCCN Biomarkers Compendium™ includes more than 900 biomarker uses covering all NCCN Guidelines® disease sites where biomarker testing is applicable.
Users can visit NCCN.org/biomarkers today and enter the code: BIOMARKERS for 30 days of free access to the NCCN Biomarkers Compendium. Trial subscriptions are available through January 2013.