Precision Medicine in Oncology®

Marc Peeters, MD, PhD, department of oncology, Antwerp University Hospital, Antwerpen, Belgium, discusses the frequency of S492R mutations found in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer patients who were treated with panitumumab or cetuximab monotherapy.

Haralambos Raftopoulos, MD, associate professor, Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine, discusses pulmonary toxicity with EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs).

The FDA's Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee voted 11-2 against the accelerated approval of the PARP inhibitor olaparib as a maintenance therapy for women with platinum-sensitive relapsed ovarian cancer with germline BRCA mutations.

Genetic testing limited to BRCA1/2 mutations would have missed 29% of mutations that carry hereditary risk of ovarian cancer, a study using next-generation sequencing showed.

One-quarter of patients with relapsed or refractory BRCA-mutant ovarian cancer attained major objective responses to treatment with the investigational PARP inhibitor veliparib.

Lecia V. Sequist, MD, medical oncologist, associate professor, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, discusses the efficacy of CO-1686 for the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer.

When Franco Muggia, MD, was a freshly minted oncologist 50 years ago, his new colleagues warned him not to waste much time learning about a drug like fluorouracil.

Gad Getz, PhD, MSc, focuses on cancer genome analysis, particularly cataloging all of the genomic events that occur during the development of cancer, in his laboratory at the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard.

Edward S. Kim, MD, chairman, Solid Tumor Oncology and Investigational Therapeutics, Levine Cancer Institute, Carolinas HealthCare System, discusses the use of improved and complete enrichment co-amplification at lower denaturation temperature method for the detection of EGFR and KRAS mutations from cell-free plasma DNA of patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Even as technological advances make it possible to sequence DNA on a large scale at relatively lower costs and in shorter time-frames, emerging evidence from the world's top research laboratories suggests that scientists are still a long way from having a complete catalog of cancer genes.

Oncology practitioners now have several resources to consult for advice on genetic testing for their patients following the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) December 2013 update of its 2005 BRCA recommendations.