Precision Medicine Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Liquid biopsy is breaking speed and access barriers in precision oncology. In this episode of the Precision Medicine Podcast, part of our series Bringing Precision Medicine to Everyone and the first in a two-part focus, founder and host Karan Cushman speaks with Dr. Kashyap Patel, CEO of Carolina Blood and Cancer Care Associates, author, and national leader in value-based oncology.

Together, they explore how liquid biopsy is changing the diagnostic and treatment landscape. This blood-based test can deliver results in days, be repeated as needed, and reduce the need for invasive procedures. Tissue biopsy remains important, but when the samples are too small or unsuitable for testing, liquid biopsy provides a valuable alternative in guiding treatment decisions and monitoring disease.

For patients with aggressive “turbo cancers” such as diffuse large B-cell lymphoma or small cell lung cancer, the time saved can be lifesaving. Karan shares her own experience with DLBCL, while Dr. Patel highlights real-world cases where liquid biopsy revealed actionable mutations, informed therapy, or enabled minimal residual disease (MRD) monitoring.

Finally, Dr. Patel underscores the need for standardization and payer alignment to move liquid biopsy from innovation to everyday practice. This candid discussion frames liquid biopsy not as a futuristic idea, but as a clinically powerful and scalable tool that is closing gaps in precision oncology today.

What does it really mean to bring precision medicine to every patient, in every community?

In this inspiring, one-hour episode of the Precision Medicine Podcast, host Karan Cushman sits down with Dr. Arif Kamal, Chief Patient Officer at the American Cancer Society (ACS), for a wide-ranging conversation that reframes how we think about progress in cancer care. With a background in oncology, palliative care and health system innovation—and a personal story shaped by his mother’s metastatic breast cancer diagnosis—Dr. Kamal offers a deeply human perspective on what it means to deliver not just the right treatment, but the right experience for every patient.

Dr. Kamal shares how the ACS is working to make precision medicine more equitable by addressing barriers like geography, affordability, clinician burnout, and fragmented care. He explains the importance of “precision compassion”—the idea that personalized care must also include empathy, listening, and action tailored to the needs of each individual. “We can’t talk about innovation,” he says, “without talking about accessibility.”

From the importance of whole-person care and mobile health units in rural communities, to expanding insurance coverage for biomarker testing and building trust with patients and caregivers, this conversation is full of insight into what it will truly take to change the odds for people facing cancer.

You’ll also hear about the ACS’s bold initiatives:

• The Change the Odds campaign, tackling ZIP code-driven disparities in care
• ACS CAN’s legislative efforts to expand access to biomarker testing
• How the ACS’s roundtables and grassroots partnerships support health systems, clinicians, and researchers nationwide

Dr. Kamal challenges us to think beyond science alone and focus on what really matters to patients—whether that’s more time, better quality of life or simply the ability to hold a grandchild on the beach.

Don’t miss this conversation about how we turn precision medicine from a possibility into a promise—one rooted in empathy, equity and action.

Subscribe here to catch every episode in the series "Bringing Precision Medicine to Everyone." Next, we explore the evolving world of liquid biopsy and its role in expanding access to early cancer detection and precision treatment.

In this episode of the Precision Medicine Podcast, host Karan Cushman does some time traveling with Dr. Douglas Flora through his lifetime journey with cancer. Dr. Flora is the Medical Director of Oncology Services at St. Elizabeth Healthcare and Editor-in-Chief AI in Precision Oncology, a peer-reviewed research journal dedicated to advancing artificial intelligence applications in clinical and precision oncology.

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In this episode of the Precision Medicine Podcast, hosts Karan Cushman and Clynt Taylor welcome back Dr. Luis Raez, Medical Director and Chief Scientific Officer at Memorial Cancer Institute who is joined by Dr. Pranil Chandra, Chief Genomic Officer at PathGroup. 

Together, we discuss the key barriers to performing comprehensive genomic profiling in lung cancer; how collaboration between oncologists and pathologists can enable a more consistent approach; and the improvements that should be made to close the gaps between the available life-extending, targeted therapies on the market today and the lung cancer patients who need them. 

To read the full summary, download the transcript and subscribe to receive future episodes straight to your in-box visit Precision Medicine Podcast Episode #58.

Special thanks to our partners at Janssen Biotech for their sponsorship of this episode.

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To mark the beginning of Season 5 of the Precision Medicine Podcast, we are honored to welcome Dr. Debra Patt, Executive Vice President of Texas Oncology. As an oncologist and breast cancer specialist at one of the nation’s largest community cancer practices, Dr. Patt is on the frontlines of oncology care every day. She joins us to discuss how Texas Oncology uses clinical decision-support technologies and health economics and health services research (HEOR) to deliver more consistent precision oncology care to patients at over 200 locations across Texas. 

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In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Karen Winkfield, Executive Director of the Meharry-Vanderbilt Alliance, appointee to President Joe Biden's National Cancer Advisory Board, and co-host of the weekly podcast, 3 Black Docs, which is dedicated to educating the community about health and health disparities in an approachable and entertaining way.

Dr. Winkfield’s commitment to her calling was clear by the fact that she joins us during her vacation to discuss racial disparities in the healthcare system that prevent many Black patients from seeking and receiving appropriate care. She tells us that she didn’t discover her calling early and, due to family and cultural barriers of her own, she almost didn’t pursue it at all. In fact, it took the support of a dedicated high-school teacher and nine emotional years to finish her undergraduate degree in biochemistry to get her where she is today as a practicing radiation oncologist.

Off the top we ask Dr. Winkfield what can be learned from greater participation of underrepresented groups in clinical trials or greater participation in the healthcare system. She notes that Black people are still dying of cancer at a much higher rate than the rest of the population, and while there are some biologic reasons, much of the cause is under-representation in cancer clinical trials.

We point out her step-by-step plan to address this type of imbalance in the healthcare system, and we are reminded that this is nothing new as she has been working to help address it for decades. She says, "Okay, I laid out a plan, but there's been a plan out for ending cancer disparities for over 20 years." The unequal burden document that was essentially kind of written by the Institutes of Medicine. Congress actually was the one who said, "Hey, we need to kind of understand what's going on with this cancer disparities thing." The whole plan is outlined.

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Part of what the challenge is now is, do we have the will, do we have the will to do what is needed? Yes, I mean, there are those of us who've been kind of yelling from the mountaintops for decades now that we need to do something different because people are dying.”

She goes on to explain that balancing disparity isn’t as easy as, say, offering translation services, because institutionalized racism runs so deep that it presents barriers at every step. For instance, she says that if you look at the Cancer Genome Atlas Program, which has over 11,000 primary cancer samples, only 25 of those specimens are from prostate cancers derived from Black men, despite the fact that Black men not only have a much greater risk of developing prostate cancer, probably twice as high as any other racial ethnic group, and they're two-and-a-half times as likely to die of prostate cancer. She says, in America, your wealth directly impacts your health. Your zip code impacts your outcome more than your genetic code.

We naturally asked what role technology can play in eliminating healthcare disparities, and she says that without more representative patient samples, trials and access, precision medicine can never be precise.

In fact, she believes precision medicine can actually deepen the divide if it is not used with precision in terms of the whole person.

Where do they come from? What are barriers to them accessing precision medicine, such as transportation or even paying for parking?

Dr. Winkfield is a strong proponent of navigators who help cancer patients overcome those institutional barriers to ensure that they have equal access to the promise of precision medicine. She says, “These are the things, the social determinants of health, if we can stop and just see the person in front of us and say, what is it that you need to help you along your cancer journey? That to me is being precise.”

In episode 55 of the Precision Medicine Podcast, we welcome Dr. Stephen Kingsmore, President and CEO of the Rady Children's Institute for Genomic Medicine. Dr. Kingsmore joins us to discuss the extraordinary role whole genome sequencing is playing in prolonging and improving the life of critically ill newborns.

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Dr. Christian Rolfo, President of the International Society of Liquid Biopsy and Associate Director for Clinical Research at the Center of Thoracic Oncology at the Tisch Cancer Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, joins us to explain the unique role liquid biopsies are playing in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

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Learn more about our lead sponsor Trapelo Health here.

In this Precision Medicine Podcast episode, we are joined by Dr. Belinda King-Kallimanis, Director of Patient-Focused Research at LUNGevity—an organization that brings together research, education and support services for patients and caregivers in the lung cancer community—and Nichelle Stigger, LUNGevity board member and lung cancer survivor. They sat down with us to discuss everything from the importance of patient-friendly language in lung cancer to discrepancies in access to biomarker testing and what LUNGevity is doing to improve the status quo. Read the full summary and listen here.

In celebration of the three-year anniversary of the Precision Medicine Podcast, we take a look back at how far precision diagnostics have come with the help of one of our first guests Hannah Mamuszka, Founder and CEO of Alva10, and her colleague Lena Chaihorsky. Both women are focused on resolving the knowledge gap between payers and diagnostic companies and moving diagnostics to the forefront of the precision medicine conversation.

Read the full summary and tune in here!