Personalized cancer therapy: leveraging a knowledge base for clinical decision-making.

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Abstract

The next-generation sequencing (NGS), also known as massively parallel sequencing, is rapidly being incorporated into oncology practice. With increasing numbers of genes tested, interpretation of genomic reports and selecting treatments based on the tumor's genomic analysis becomes more and more complicated for the treating oncologist. To help guide personalized treatments in oncology, The Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Institute for Personalized Cancer Therapy (IPCT) at MD Anderson Cancer Center has developed a knowledge base, available at https://personalizedcancertherapy.org or https://pct.mdanderson.org (PCT). This knowledge base provides information on function of common genomic alterations and their therapeutic implications. We here describe how such genomic information can be used by health care providers to identify genomically-matched therapies.