Demands and challenges to the personal medicine of cancer research

Demands and challenges to the personal medicine of cancer research

摘要

Personalized medicine is defined as “a form of medicine that uses information about a person's genes, proteins, and environment to prevent, diagnose, and treat disease” by the U.S. National Cancer Institute. The applications of personalized medicine in cancer is broad, including: evaluating the risk of developing a particular type of cancer and selecting screening strategies to lower this risk; Matching the right patients with the appropriate treatments that are more likely to be effective and reducing side effects by targeting treatment to each individual patient; Predicting the risk of recurrence and providing strategies to identify the patients who would benefit from adjuvant therapy. With the help of advanced knowledge of molecular oncology and development of new technologies, such as whole genome sequencing, SNPs analysis, DNA-microarray technology, proteomics by mass spectrometry and bioinformatics, patients may receive more effective tailored therapy that targeting the specific tumor. Although many challenges still remain, it is clear that personalized medicine will dramatically change the cancer therapy in the near future.

关键词

personalized medicine / targeted therapy / prognosis / challenges