Personalized and Precision Oncology (PPO) to be set up via precision oncology strategy for cancer care team: Developing targeted cancer therapy & advancing personalized cancer care

A new systems approach to diseased states and wellness result in a new branch in the healthcare services, namely, personalized and precision medicine (PPM). The concept of PPM is becoming increasingly relevant for cancer treatment, moving from the ‘one-size-fits-all’ standard therapy to a more personalized scheme guided by molecular diagnostics.

A comprehensive molecular tumor analysis integrating a combination of NGS methods offers the best chance for personalizing cancer care, enlarging the scope of therapy choices and offering potential new options for challenging cases, for instance metastatic tumors, rare cancer types, and cancers of unknown primary. Cutting-edge bioinformatics pipelines integrate the multiple data levels to construct Big Data and Data Sets and to generate a personalized tumor report. Though the panel approach helps to orientate therapy choices for particular cancer types, many “hard to treat” tumors remain in need of more effective diagnostic solutions.

A consolidated team of molecular pathologists, IT experts and cancer practitioners of the next step generation are becoming to play a crucial role in developing and implementing OMICS-based profiling tests in practice and communicate the results and their relevance with clinicians. Such approach is considered to be of utmost importance for successfully translating the latest advancements into a benefit to patients, illustrating a generation of the “next-generation cancer pathologists, cancer-related practitioners and oncologists globally”.

Along with the above-mentioned, theranostics is an innovative concept of personalized therapy that focuses on both the accurate selection of patients and providing them with targeted radio ligand cancer therapy to improve their prognosis. As you see, the integrated value chain of PPM-related oncology tools equips theranostics programs with state-of-the-art solutions at every step of the theranostics care pathway.

PPM has the potential to tailor therapy towards the oncogenic drivers of the tumor and modulate the tumor immune environment, whilst aiming to optimize tumor response and thereby taking into account the therapy-induced toxicities for each specific patient. PPM-related cancer practice (Personalized and Precision Oncology/PPO) is guided by the specific biology of each patient's cancer – the type and subtype of the cancer, its set of genetic abnormalities, its vulnerability to certain therapies, including immunotherapy, and the patient's overall health. Today, cancer-fighting drugs of the next step generation enable doctors to strike at cancer's fundamental roots in the human genome, whilst using targeted therapies engineered to attack tumor cells with specific abnormalities, while leaving normal cells largely unharmed. Some agents are designed to strike directly at cells with specific genetic changes that drive tumors' development and survival, or to inhibit overactive signaling pathways that allow cancer cells to grow and divide uncontrollably.

The latter means that we are entering an era of rapidly evolving transformation in cancer research as it relates to medical practice, and a shifting paradigm of standardized health care in which detailed molecular information regarding a patient’s cancer is being used for PPM-related treatments. Taking into account the presence of different genetic changes in cancer patients or pre-cancer persons-at-risk, we would aim at making the need for PPO much greater to get the cancer patients cured! In this context, functioning approach named Cancer Care Team or Trans-Disciplinary Care Team, clinical practice and process, evidence-based decision making, and smart targeted therapies are becoming crucial! The latter integrates multidisciplinary experts and develops real?time therapeutic strategy based on clinical phenomes and translational genomics and related OMICS technologies. That approach provides comprehensive, whole?process, and personalized diagnosis and treatment services for patients with complex cancer or complex drug resistance progression; provides guidance for further adjustment of drug use; and establishes a multidisciplinary cooperative team, improves the quality of clinical diagnosis and treatment, and optimizes the process of medical services.

Sergey Suchkov was born in the City of Astrakhan, Russia, in a family of dynasty medical doctors. In 1980, graduated from Astrakhan State Medical University and was awarded with MD. In 1985, Suchkov maintained his PhD as a PhD student of Sechenov University and Institute of Medical En-zymology. In 2001, Suchkov maintained his Doctor Degree at the National Institute of Immunology, Russia. From 1989 through 1995, a Head of the Lab of Clinical Immunology, Helmholtz Eye Re-search Institute in Moscow. From 1995 through 2004 - a Chair of the Dept for Clinical Immunology, Moscow Clinical Research Institute (MONIKI). In 1993-1996. At present, Dr Sergey Suchkov, MD, PhD, is: Vice-Director for Research and Development of the National Center for Human Photosynthesis,    Aguascalientes, México. Member of the New York Academy of Sciences, USA; Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, Russia; American Chemical Society (ACS), USA; American Heart Association (AHA), USA; Euro-pean Association for Medical Education (AMEE), Dundee, UK; EPMA (European Association for Predictive, Preventive and Personalized Medicine), Brussels, EU; ARVO (American Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology); ISER (International Society for Eye Research); Personalized Medicine Coalition (PMC), Washington, DC, USA.