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whether it is in the lung, breast, or prostate. The genes inside the malignancy are
considered to be more important than the location of the cancer. The testing could
be especially useful for patients with rare cancers, usually neglected by cancer
researchers or pharmaceutical companies, as they may share genetic signatures with
more common tumors already being successfully treated. One limitation is the cost
as the hospital charges $2,000 for the test and it may not be covered by the health
insurance companies.
Personalized Oncology at Oregon Health & Science University
In 2010, Oregon Health and Science University’s (OHSU) Knight Cancer Institute
(Portland, OR) started to recruit new researchers and launch initiatives focused on
exploring the cellular pathways through which cancer has been shown to grow. It
manages >1,000 research projects, and conducts ~400 clinical trials every year.
OHSU Knight Cancer Institute plans to more than double the current capacity of
20,000 samples of its tissue bank as well as expand its molecular laboratory service
by combining the four existing labs on campus under the umbrella of Knight
Diagnostic Laboratory, which will maintain its cancer focus but also focus on rare
diseases. Through these efforts, the institute will develop a new model for patient
care designed to tailor treatment plans toward the tumor biology of each individual
patient. The institute envisions genotyping tumors so patients can be linked to new
therapies or, if deemed appropriate, clinical trials. The Institute is also promising to
overhaul its clinical molecular lab operations, which can map the genomes of
patients to determine the appropriate treatment for their cancers. The main set of
tools and technologies to be acquired will be for next-generation sequencing. The
aim is to advance personalized cancer therapy.
Southeast Nebraska Cancer Center’s Personalized
Medicine Network
In 2005, the Southeast Nebraska Cancer Center (Lincoln, Neb) was awarded $1.5
million in US Department of Defense (DoD) appropriations to support a network
and database of cancer patients’ tissue samples. The center, will be part of the DoD’s
National Functional Genomics Center, and will use the funding to create a network
to collect cancer tissue samples and to follow the patients’ progress through therapy,
which would be merged into a national database. This large-scale effort combines
government, academic and private-sector resources. The program also uses “sys-
tems biology” approach, which bring together advanced science in pharmaceuti-
cals, molecular biology, genetic screening, bioinformatics and other technologies.
The system will allow personalized cancer treatment decisions based on patients’
molecular profi les. This research will help us identify genomic sequence changes
20 Development of Personalized Medicine