Personalized Medicine: A Long Way to Go

(00:07:52) EJC News Focus, 2011 Nov 1

Many studies presented at the 2011 European Multidisciplinary Cancer Congress (Stockholm, Sweden - September 23-27 2011) take us a step closer to the reality of personalised medicine and an individual treatment regimen for each patient. Breast cancer has been in the vanguard of progress; once considered a single disease, it is now thought to comprise 8, or even 12 subtypes, many of which are treated differently.

This stratification has been partly responsible for steadily improving outcomes, and at the opening session, Gordon Mills (MD Anderson Centre, Texas, USA) said this success demonstrates the potential of the approach. But he also said that personalised medicine is more challenging than we’re acknowledging and it could be a long time before it becomes broadly applicable.

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