Toward Personalized Therapy for Cancer

Personalized medicine is a model for the way medicine will evolve through the use of specific treatments and therapies best suited to an individual’s genotype. It is driven by patient demand for safer and more effective medicines and therapies. This chapter focuses on the role of personalized medicine in cancer and explores its use in current clinical practice, its likely application in the future, and the challenges to be overcome to achieve this goal. Economic, social, and ethical considerations relating to personalized medicine are also discussed.