Open AccessHurdles on the road to personalized medicine
Author(s) -
Tursz Thomas,
Bernards Rene
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
molecular oncology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.332
H-Index - 88
eISSN - 1878-0261
pISSN - 1574-7891
DOI - 10.1016/j.molonc.2014.08.009
Subject(s) - personalized medicine , precision medicine , medicine , cancer treatment , cancer , bioinformatics , intensive care medicine , pathology , biology
Cancer treatment is slowly shifting from an approach in which the tissue of origin and the histology were the guiding principles for the choice of chemotherapy towards a genotype‐centric approach in which the changes in the cancer genome are used to select patients for treatment with highly selective and targeted drugs. This transition has all the hallmarks of a disruptive innovation and requires major adjustments in the way that cancer is diagnosed and treated. We discuss here the hurdles on the road ahead to a more personalized treatment of cancer.