Personalized Medicine for Lung Cancer

Abstract

83 ISSN 1758-1966 10.2217/LMT.12.22 © 2012 Future Medicine Ltd Lung Cancer Manage. (2012) 1(2), 83–86 Personalized medicine employs characteristics of disease in the context of an individual to guide medical care, including diagnostics, therapeutics and prognostication. The concept of personalized medicine is said to be integral to Chinese traditional medicine [1], and Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine, first espoused that the patient is the most important factor influencing therapeutic efficacy. With the genomic revolution, modern personalized medicine is increasingly founded upon information from molecular or genetic testing in contrast to traditional clinicopathological features. However, it does not describe the creation of drugs or medical devices that are unique to each person, but rather the ability to classify individuals into groups with unique susceptibility to disease or differential responses to treatments. Some prefer the term ‘precision medicine’ instead, in reference to this more precise delivery of effective diagnostics or therapeutics to an individual [2]. Regardless, personalized medicine is permeating medical practice, due to rapid advances in technology and targeted drug development. While chemotherapy trials previously dominated cancer conferences, contemporary trials in lung cancer are increasingly focused on targeted agents. However, personalized medicine requires a deeper consideration beyond biomarker discovery and registration trials to ensure effective translation into practice and improved outcomes for patients. To enable its implementation and integration into routine clinical practice, the health community needs to prepare appropriate frameworks for regulating and managing the influx of rapid scientific development [2]. In the USA, a National Academies working group has highlighted the need for a revised classification of lung cancer based on intrinsic biology, as well as traditional signs and symptoms, as part of the migration to precision medicine [3].