Translating genomics into clinical practice: applications in lung cancer

Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is the leading cause of death from cancer worldwide and has a poor overall survival across all stages of disease. The recent advancement of gene expression technology addresses the phenotypic complexity of many diseases, including NSCLC. These genomic approaches have shown great promise in NSCLC in helping to improve risk stratification, prognosis, and the clinician's ability to match the right therapy to an individual patient. Large prospective clinical trials are under way to evaluate the application and clinical impact of the use of genomics-based predictors of prognosis and therapy compared with current standard-of-care methods in patients with NSCLC. Several challenges of genomics-based therapy must be addressed before widespread application of these techniques becomes a reality. Genomic approaches in NSCLC have the potential to advance our understanding of underlying disease biology, to improve current prognostic and treatment paradigms, and to identify new targets for treatment, ultimately improving survival in patients with NSCLC and providing an opportunity for "personalized medicine."