Abstract

Precision oncology has been perceived differently by many scientists and health care professionals, and there are controversial views on the benefits of this medical approach as well as definition of the phrase itself. In this talk, I intend to first provide a brief review of such views, and evidences - for and against the benefits of precision oncology, and related views in literature. I would then present some of our data and my own perspective. In the era of mass scale data generations, combined single-molecule and single-cell studies, we may not have made optimal use of the power of integrated data analysis. Our group has employed meta analysis of transcriptomic data to identify new molecules with varying strengths of association with diseases, including cancer. I will present some of the results from such cancer studies. The significance haplotype variations is often undermined. Results of a different study in our group indicates a possible haplotype variation across human populations due to differential usage of meiotic hotspots. Hence, there is a possibility of a significant impact of such haplotype diversity across populations in their disease-genetics and/or response to treatments. Based on the observations of such studies from our group, recent discoveries elsewhere, their interpretations and a few speculations, I feel the need for an integrated approach for a more promising precision oncology where a combinatorial analysis should be performed on the mutations (classical approach: individually), haplotypes and a holistic network analysis stemming from meta analysis of transcriptomic data.