Revolutionizing Cancer Treatment: Personalized Therapy Based on Tumor Genome Analysis and “Omics” Technology to Hit Its Weak Spot, Moving Beyond the “One Fits All” Approach.

2023-04-18 14:45:51

(C) iStock by Getty Images: Medicine is increasingly addressing individual patients.

A cancer diagnosis is dramatic for everyone, but there is always more reason for hope – medical science has made great progress: for a long time the affected organ played a decisive role in the choice of treatment.

Today we know, for example, that breast cancer is not just breast cancer. The analysis of the tumor genome reveals differences and provides new treatment approaches.

weak spot

That means: Personalized therapy is on the rise! The long-term goal is to find a suitable drug based on the individual changes in the tumor, which is only produced for this one tumor and precisely hits its weak point. To do this, the genome of the cells, the changes in the genome, the mutations in the messenger molecules for protein production, the proteins in the cell and the metabolic products must be analyzed in comparison to the healthy cells of each patient. These methods are summarized as “omics” technology. The “one fits all” approach that every treatment fits one and the same type of cancer no longer applies!

what is cancer

Cancer is a malignant new tissue formation, a so-called neoplasia or malignancy. The tumor cells multiply uncontrollably, destroy healthy tissue and form secondary ulcers, so-called metastases. In 2021, 20,701 people died in Austria as a result of such cancers.