![]() (2) However, this trend toward precision-based personalized medicine has fallen out of fashion in the cancer drug discovery community. (1) Another success story can be seen in melanoma, where treatment with the BRAF inhibitor vemurafenib has caused melanoma to change from a mostly untreatable disease to one where over 50% of patients show a meaningful clinical response. ![]() Examples include imatinib, which targets BCR-ABL that has extended the median survival of patients with chronic myelogenous leukemia to greater than 10 years. There have been numerous success stories, primarily where “oncogene addiction” occurs, in which a particular subtype of cancer is over-reliant for survival on a particular oncogene, and therefore inhibition of this oncogene through small molecules or antibodies causes selected cell death. The human genome project has aided the route toward personalized medicine, wherein unique biomarkers in individuals can be detected and treated with tailor-made therapeutics for that specific cancer. Before the advent of the human genome project in 2003, cancer treatments were mainly radiotherapy and nonspecific chemotherapy: two treatment methods that are famed for their lack of specificity and severe side effects. It is commonly known that cancer is a disease of the genome, wherein errors in DNA replication and repair cause failures in cell function, while the mechanisms that would normally deal with these faulty cells are also compromised, resulting in cancer cell survival and ultimately proliferation.
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