Advancing Precision Medicine: Tailoring Personalized Therapies

Abstract

A range of key precision medicine approaches were used and often combined, providing key insights into the complex molecular signaling observed in individual tumors and revealing novel treatment options for individual patients. Circulating biomarkers can allow the calculation of patient risk, tumor mass and heterogeneity, and the prediction/monitoring of treatment outcomes, in real-time. Neuroblastoma often presents with tumor cells in the bone marrow and accurate disease detection is essential for prognostication and assessment of disease respons. The annual Irish Association for Cancer Research Meeting in 2017 highlighted the progress in individualized precision medicine gained from applying advances in individualized real-time tumor profiling. Tailoring personalized treatments to recurrent, resistant tumors necessitates understanding drug resistance in heterogeneous tumors. Metastatic cancers challenged with targeted agents promote growth of resistant cell populations and consequently targeted therapies are often only transiently effective.