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Review
. 2016 Nov/Dec;22(6):418-422.
doi: 10.1097/PPO.0000000000000228.

The Importance of Biopsy in the Era of Molecular Medicine

Etay Ziv  1 , Jeremy C Durack, Stephen B Solomon
Affiliations
Review

The Importance of Biopsy in the Era of Molecular Medicine

Etay Ziv et al. Cancer J. 2016 Nov/Dec.

Abstract

Recent advances in the molecular characterization of cancers have triggered interest in developing a new taxonomy of disease in oncology with the goal of using the molecular profile of a patient's tumor to predict response to treatment. Image-guided needle biopsy is central to this "precision medicine" effort. In this review, we first discuss the current role of biopsy in relation to clinical examples of molecular medicine. We then outline important bottlenecks to the advancement of precision medicine and highlight the potential role of image-guided biopsy to address these challenges.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Driver mutation profile of lung adenocarcinomas. Generated using data from cbio-portal based on 5 studies of lung adenocarcinoma(65). Targeted small molecule inhibitors are either approved or in development for all of the above mutations (66). “Other” category includes NRAS, FGFR1, and AKT1 which represent <1% of driver mutations.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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