Open AccessEvolutionary Mechanisms of Cancer Suggest Rational Therapeutic Approaches
Author(s) -
Alessio Balzerano,
Elena Paccosi,
Luca Proietti-De-Santis
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
cytogenetic and genome research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.571
H-Index - 88
ISSN - 1424-8581
DOI - 10.1159/000516530
Subject(s) - personalized medicine , precision medicine , biology , computational biology , cancer , cancer therapy , somatic evolution in cancer , bioinformatics , genetics
The goal in personalized therapeutic approaches for cancer medicine is to identify specific mutations with prognostic and therapeutic value in order to tailor the therapy for the single patient. The most powerful obstacle for personalized medicine arises from intratumor heterogeneity and clonal evolution, which can promote drug resistance. In this scenario, new technologies, such as next-generation sequencing, have emerged as a central diagnostic tool to profile cancer (epi)genomic landscapes. Therefore, a better understanding of the biological mechanisms underlying cancer evolution is mandatory and represents the current challenge to accurately predict whether cancer will recur after chemotherapy with the aim to tailor rational therapeutic approaches.