Precision Medicine in Oncology®

The Biotech Focus series provides updates on advances in the oncology treatment pipeline. In each entry, summaries of ongoing research, breaking news, and FDA decisions relating to a variety of cancers are presented.

The question of whether it should be legal to patent genes has reached the US Supreme Court, and the impending decision by the highest federal court in the country could significantly transform the current research landscape.

Clinical trials are under way that may change the way risk of recurrence is assessed for early-stage breast cancer patients, allowing for individualization of therapy.

Emanuel F. Petricoin III, PhD, Co-Director, Center for Applied Proteomics & Molecular Medicine, Professor of Life Sciences, George Mason University, discusses disease screening with biomarkers.

An interview with José Baselga, MD, PhD, who helped to develop new drugs and combination therapies for the treatment of breast cancer, including the early targeted therapy trastuzumab and the more recent pertuzumab.

Oncology continues to lead all therapeutic areas in drug development research, with nearly 5500 of more than 17,000 projects in the works.

The drug palbociclib (formerly known as PD-0332991) has received has received a "breakthrough therapy designation" from the FDA for the treatment of patients with breast cancer.

José Baselga, MD, PhD, explores the dual inhibition of cell-signaling pathways in breast cancer on several fronts, including new therapies for patients with the HER2-positive subtype and novel ways to target mTOR and the PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway.

Sign-toting scientists, students, patients, and caregivers gathered near the Carnegie Library in Washington, DC, to protest recent cuts to the budget of the National Institutes of Health, the largest funder of medical research in the world.

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Seattle Cancer Care Alliance Join OncLive's Strategic Alliance Partnership Program.

The oncology we all learned over the past three decades will soon be a thing of the past, making way for therapy decisions based on what molecular switches should be turned on and off, and of equal importance, in what sequence.

Fabrice Andre, MD, PhD, Research Director, Head of INSERM Unit U981, Institut National des Sciences et de la Recherche Médicale, Associate Professor, Department of Medical Oncology, Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France, discusses upcoming research in metastatic breast cancer.

Jennifer Brown, MD, PhD, Director, Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia Center, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, discusses targeted therapies and mutations in chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

Recently reported data demonstrate that the presence of a specific mutation in PDGFRA predicts for the lack of activity for the imatinib in patients with gastrointestinal stromal tumors.

Two novel, oral drugs that target the B-Cell receptor signal transduction pathway could significantly change the way chronic lymphocytic leukemia is treated.

Emanuel "Chip" Petricoin III, PhD, from George Mason University, discusses the inability of DNA and RNA profiling to predict response to treatment with targeted therapies.

Bruce D. Cheson, MD, from Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses the prospect of using antibody drug conjugates in non-Hodgkin lymphomas, including follicular lymphoma.