Collaboration as a foundation for advancing research in personalized medicine in cancer care

Transforming healthcare through collaborative relationships is the key to making successful advances in personalized medicine. The strategies for building a framework to bring together expertise and resources in order to realize all the possibilities of personalized medicine are discussed in this article. The key to this endeavor is the ability to identify potential collaboration with academic medical centers, research laboratories, biotechnology companies and community cancer centers. Translation of research from bench to bedside is only paradigm changing if it can then be translated to community care. The value of clinical prospective biospecimen collection with high quality clinical annotation will be explored. Recognizing the opportunities for performing clinical trials, beta-testing of new technology especially in community clinical practice will be emphasized. The goal is to expand the realm of personalized cancer care to allow for integration of molecular marker and individualized therapy to the majority of cancer patients worldwide.