Journal of Clinical & Experimental Orthopaedics

The new paradigm of precision medicine: Evidence-based clinical oncology

Precision medicine is an emerging approach for disease treatment and prevention that takes into consideration the variations in genomic makeup, environmental exposure, and social economic status of each individual. Evidence-based oncology integrates the clinical expertise, patient values and the best available evidence, especially the cancer genomic information of a patient in clinical decision making. Next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies have revolutionized genomic research by decreasing the cost of sequencing while increasing the throughput. Clinical application of NGS in cancer can detect clinically actionable genetic/genomic alterations that are critical for cancer care. In certain cancers, patient risk and prognosis can be predicted based on the mutation profile identified by NGS. Many targeted therapies have been developed for cancer patients who bear specific genomic alterations. However, choosing right NGS techniques for appropriate clinical applications can be challenging, especially in clinical oncology, where the material for testing is often limited and the turnaround time of testing is frequently constrained to just a few days. Currently, targeted NGS approaches have emerged as the best fit for clinical oncology

Marilyn M Li