Personalized Healthcare Vision in Oncology

In the very near future, a patient’s cancer will be extensively characterized for mutations and other molecular abnormalities, and his or her treatment will be based on the identified molecular changes instead of where the cancer originated in the body. This approach is part of what is called precision (or personalized) medicine.
The greater molecular and mechanistic understanding of cancer that we are gaining - and applying toward the development of new therapies—is also directly applicable to cancer prevention and screening. Precision medicine uses the genetics of disease to identify effective therapies, and, thanks in large part to NCI-supported research, we know that cancer is a disease of the genome.