Introduction: Getting personal in anticancer drug development

Johann de Bono

The Institute of Cancer Research, Royal Marsden Hospital, Sutton, UK

The rapid evolution and increasing affordability of technologies to dissect the cancer cell genome as well as the pharmacogenomics of rationally designed, molecularly targeted, drugs increases the likelihood of truly personalising cancer medicine. It has been envisioned that such pharmacogenomic studies will one day allow us to interrogate each patient’s cancer and normal genome to allow the optimal selection of anticancer drugs and their dosing.

Many challenges, however, remain. These include easy access to frequent cancer tissue sampling to allow these studies, intra-patient cancer cell heterogeneity and genetic instability, distinguishing driver genetic alterations from passenger changes and the overall fiscal cost to society.

The panel will discuss whether we are any closer to achieving truly personalised medicine and means to achieve this.