«6th Annual IMPPC Conference».
3rd CNAG Symposium on Genome Research: Rare Diseases 26 th Febreary 2015.
Recent advances in genome technology have made it possible, in principle, to identify all the genetic and epigenetic alterations accumulated in cancer cells during the process of multistage carcinogenesis. Based on the knowledge obtained from these studies, various inhibitors specific for activated and/or mutated gene products have been developed and applied in order to treat cancer patients carrying specific somatic genetic and epigenetic alterations. For several types of cancer integrating this type of treatment into clinical practice has considerably improved the prognosis for patients, therefore, molecular markers are now important for the classification of cancer, in particular, to define the personalized treatment strategy in each patient.
Additionally, it has been also possible to identify many genetic polymorphisms associated with susceptibility to several types of cancer by genome-wide association studies. Such knowledge will be applicable in the near future for the development of novel ways of predicting cancer and eventually preventing it altogether in high-risk individuals. For this reason it has become very important to identify molecular targets useful for cancer prediction, prevention, diagnosis and personalized treatment.
