Abstract

Clinical Applications of Molecular Profiling for Cancer Therapy

Ramesh Ramanathan, Medical Oncologist, Translational Genomics Research Institute

Patients with advanced metastatic cancer respond frequently to first-line therapy but resistance occurs at varying time points and salvage chemotherapy becomes less and less effective.  With the advent of NGS,  biomarkers are being identified and their relevance to cancer therapies is rapidly evolving and changing the treatment paradigm. In clinical practice the challenge is to identify actionable biomarkers for which there is available targeted therapy. In most cases targeted agents are still in clinical trials and patient access to these trials needs to be enhanced to optimize patient benefit. Clinical trials of targeted agents and ways to accelerate cancer drug development will also be discussed.