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Functional precision cancer medicine-moving beyond pure genomics

Anthony Letai1

  • 1Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

Nature Medicine
|September 9, 2017
PubMed

Insights

Precision medicine aims to match patients with the right cancer drugs. Current genomic strategies often fail; broadening tools to include functional testing of patient tumor cells is proposed for better outcomes.

Area of Science:

  • Oncology
  • Genomics
  • Precision Medicine

Background:

  • Precision medicine in cancer primarily relies on genomic testing.
  • Recent studies indicate limited patient benefit from genomic precision medicine strategies.
  • This raises questions about the efficacy of current precision cancer medicine approaches.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To address the limitations of genomic-only precision medicine in cancer.
  • To propose broadening the tools used in precision cancer medicine.
  • To investigate the utility of functional information alongside genomic data.

Main Methods:

  • Critically evaluating the success of genomic precision medicine.
  • Proposing the integration of functional assays with genomic data.
  • Suggesting perturbation of patient-derived primary tumor cells with cancer therapies to gather functional information.

Main Results:

  • Genomic testing alone has shown limited benefit for many cancer patients.
  • A significant portion of cancer patients do not benefit from current genomic precision medicine.
  • The study highlights the need for a more comprehensive approach beyond genomics.

Conclusions:

  • Current precision cancer medicine, heavily reliant on genomics, has shown limited success.
  • Broadening the tools of precision medicine to include functional data is essential.
  • Perturbing patient tumor cells offers actionable functional insights for improved cancer treatment strategies.

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