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Precision medicine for cancer with next-generation functional diagnostics

Adam A Friedman1, Anthony Letai2, David E Fisher1,3

  • 1Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, Harvard Medical School, 55 Fruit Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02114, USA.

Nature Reviews. Cancer
|November 6, 2015
PubMed

Insights

Precision medicine aims to match patients with the right cancer drugs. Functional testing of patient tumor cells offers a promising approach to overcome limitations of genomics alone for personalized cancer therapy.

Area of Science:

  • Oncology
  • Translational Medicine
  • Cancer Diagnostics

Background:

  • Precision medicine in oncology often relies heavily on genomics.
  • Genomic approaches are limited by incomplete understanding of genotype-phenotype relationships in cancer.
  • Current functional testing methods for chemosensitivity have limitations.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To highlight the limitations of genomics-based precision oncology.
  • To introduce next-generation functional diagnostic technologies for cancer.
  • To propose an integrated diagnostic strategy for personalized cancer therapy.

Main Methods:

  • Review of novel functional diagnostic technologies for tumor analysis.
  • Comparison of new methods with older chemosensitivity tests.
  • Discussion of integrating functional testing with genomic and immunoprofiling data.

Main Results:

  • Next-generation functional diagnostics offer improved tumor manipulation and response assays.
  • These advanced methods address limitations of traditional chemosensitivity testing.
  • Emerging technologies enable more precise assessment of drug responses in patient tumors.

Conclusions:

  • Functional testing of live patient tumor cells is crucial for precision medicine.
  • Integrating functional tests with genomics and immunoprofiling can enhance treatment matching.
  • This integrated approach promises more precise combination therapies for individual cancer patients.

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