Personalized medicine in neuro-oncology

The latest catch phrase in cancer medicine is ‘personalized medicine’ denoting the potential to devise and prescribe therapies based on molecular and genetic information quasi-unique to the patient and the patient’s tumor as well as therapies developed using cell line or rodent tumor model screens of drug candidates [1–8]. The molecular–genetic approach has the potential of being far more informative than the high-throughput cell line and/or rodent tumor model approach for a number of reasons. While some information can be obtained from glioblastoma cell lines and/or rodent tumor models, the main flaw of the cell line approach is the reality that, aside from glioblastoma, lower grade glial tumors do not grow well in culture without genetic manipulation nor do they grow in rodents.

Click here to view the full article in our partner journal CNS Oncology.