PREreview of Precision Oncology, Signaling Pathways Reprogramming and Targeted Therapy: A Holistic Approach to Molecular Cancer Therapeutics

Cancer is a complex and multifaceted disease having a number of composite problems to be considered including cancer immune evasion, therapy resistance, and recurrence for prevention and cure. Fundamentally it remains a genetic disease as diverse aspects of the complexity of tumor growth and cancer development relate to its genetic machinery and requires addressing the problems at the level of genome and epigenome. Presumably, the mutational changes occurring in the regulatory genes responsible for maintaining optimal cell growth, proliferation, and differentiation gradually lead to cancer progression and metastasis. Importantly, patients with the same cancer types respond differently to cancer therapies, indicating the need for a patient-specific treatment option for cancer cure. Precision oncology is the field of cancer research that focuses on the genetic profiling of individual tumors to identify targetable alterations involved in cancer development for custom-tailored personalized treatment of the disease. It is to rely upon the genomic study of cancer cells to get a clear picture of the prognosis and pathways involved in disease progression and to look for the means to selectively target them to ensure effective treatment of this deadly disease. Thus, precision oncology combines cancer diagnosis and prognosis followed by designing a treatment regimen for precise treatment of cancer at different stages and times. This article aims to briefly explain the foundations and frontiers of precision oncology in the context of technological advances being made in this direction to assess its scope and importance in the realization of a proper cure for cancer.  

Competing interests

The author declares that they have no competing interests.