Precision in Oncology; a Future Prospect

Shirkoohi, Reza

doi:10.22034/APJCP.2018.19.7.1739

Precision in Oncology; a Future Prospect

Document Type : Editorials

Author

Reza Shirkoohi

Cancer Biology Research Center, Cancer Research Institute, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.

10.22034/APJCP.2018.19.7.1739

Abstract

It can be considered that cancer is a disease the prevalence of which has been increased with the world modernization. Many other diseases such as huge infectious pandemics and natural or unnatural disasters have already shorten the mean age of human beings and there has been little chance for neoplastic malignancies to come on sight among the population. Malignancies have various profiling based on the characteristics of the cell origin and tumor type. There are different alterations in genetic, epigenetic, protein function, microenvironment and other systematic interactions during disease progression. In some cases, using different types of drugs which are more compatible with the morphology of the majority of cells in a tumor can cause the other cells with different genetic and epigenetic profiling to proliferate which leads to treatment failure and progression of disease to more advance stages such as systemic metastasis. Personalizing therapeutic decision for advanced patients has been performed in recent years. There are different reports of improvement of quality of life or survival enhancement and even complete remission in some advanced cases as a result of managing tumor molecular information and cell signaling analysis. Personalized medicine is still in the beginning of its way and needs more investigation and infrastructural research. Finding new biomarkers and targets in cell signaling which is involved in different aspects of disease will be helpful to increase the percentage of sensitivity in decision making.

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