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Updated: Feb 23, 2026

Integration of Wet and Dry Bench Processes Optimizes Targeted Next-generation Sequencing of Low-quality and Low-quantity Tumor Biopsies
Published on: April 11, 2016
Functional precision cancer medicine-moving beyond pure genomics
1Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Abstract:
The essential job of precision medicine is to match the right drugs to the right patients. In cancer, precision medicine has been nearly synonymous with genomics. However, sobering recent studies have generally shown that most patients with cancer who receive genomic testing do not benefit from a genomic precision medicine strategy. Although some call the entire project of precision cancer medicine into question, I suggest instead that the tools employed must be broadened. Instead of relying exclusively on big data measurements of initial conditions, we should also acquire highly actionable functional information by perturbing-for example, with cancer therapies-viable primary tumor cells from patients with cancer.
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