Personalized therapy, also called precision medicine, is treatment that is tailored to abnormal genes in your particular tumor. Precision medicine is an approach to patient care that allows doctors to select treatments that are most likely to help patients based on a genetic understanding of their disease. This may also be called personalized medicine. The idea of precision medicine is not new, but recent advances in science and technology have helped speed up the pace of this area of research.

No two cancers are alike, just as no two people are alike. Our goal is to transform cancer therapy by using advanced technological tools to predict who will respond to a specific treatment, and to match each patient with the best drug for a particular tumor.

Recent technological advances have made it possible to generate a profile of the abnormalities in the genetic code of a tumor. By gathering enough data, we can identify profiles that will allow us to begin to tailor cancer treatments to individual patients.

The Promise of Precision Medicine

The hope of precision medicine is that treatments will one day be tailored to the genetic changes in each person’s cancer. Scientists see a future when genetic tests will help decide which treatments a patient's tumor is most likely to respond to, sparing the patient from receiving treatments that are not likely to help. Research studies are going on now to test whether treating patients with treatments that target the cancer-causing genetic changes in their tumors, no matter where the cancer develops in the body, will help them. Many of these treatments are drugs known as targeted therapies.

Currently, if you need treatment for cancer, you may receive a combination of treatments, including surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and immunotherapy. Which treatments you receive usually will depend on the type of cancer, its size, and whether it has spread. With precision medicine, information about genetic changes in your tumor can help decide which treatment will work best for you.

There are drugs that have been proven effective against cancers with specific genetic changes and are approved by the FDA. Many of these drugs are discussed in Targeted Cancer Therapies. Approved treatments should be available wherever you have cancer treatment.

Precision Medicine as a Treatment Approach

Even though researchers are making progress every day, the precision medicine approach to cancer treatment is not yet part of routine care for most patients. Many new treatments designed to target a specific change are being tested right now in precision medicine clinical trials. Some clinical trials are accepting patients with specific types and stages of cancer. Others accept patients with a variety of cancer types and stages. To be eligible for precision medicine trials, your tumor must have a genetic change that can be targeted by a treatment being tested.

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• Alpine
• Associate Editor
• Journal of Clinical Trials
• clinicaltrials@eclinicalsci.com