Technological advances in clinical individualized medication for cancer
therapy: from genes to whole organism
Abstract
Nowadays, the clinical application of antitumor drugs tends towards
precision and individualization. Numerous efforts have been put in
exploiting technologies to precisely discern the features of tumors and
discover the possible response of every cancer patient to antitumor
drugs at multiple dimensions from genes, proteins, tissues to whole
organism, including Genomic data, histological information, functional
drug profiling and drug metabolism of cancer patients can be obtained
through polymerase chain reaction, sanger sequencing, next-generation
sequencing, fluorescence in situ hybridization, immunohistochemistry
staining, patient-derived tumor xenograft models, patient-derived
organoid models and therapeutic drug monitoring. The application of
various detection technologies in clinical practice has enabled
‘individualized treatment’ to be realized, but the ideal accuracy effect
has not yet been achieved. More novel technologies or technology
combinations are needed to predict the correlation between detection
information and therapeutic effect, and to put forward more accurate and
effective therapeutic strategies for every patient. Here, we briefly
summarize the conventional and state-of-the-art technologies
contributing to the clinical individualized medication and their
application in clinical practice, attempting to seek therapy options
that may ultimately improve clinical outcomes.