"Personalized Cancer Therapy": A Publicly Available Precision Oncology Resource

Abstract

High-throughput genomic and molecular profiling of tumors is emerging as an important clinical approach. Molecular profiling is increasingly being used to guide cancer patient care, especially in advanced and incurable cancers. However, navigating the scientific literature to make evidence-based clinical decisions based on molecular profiling results is overwhelming for many oncology clinicians and researchers. The Personalized Cancer Therapy website (www.personalizedcancertherapy.org) was created to provide an online resource for clinicians and researchers to facilitate navigation of available data. Specifically, this resource can be used to help identify potential therapy options for patients harboring oncogenic genomic alterations. Herein, we describe how content on www.personalizedcancertherapy.org is generated and maintained. We end with case scenarios to illustrate the clinical utility of the website. The goal of this publicly available resource is to provide easily accessible information to a broad oncology audience, as this may help ease the information retrieval burden facing participants in the precision oncology field. Cancer Res; 77(21); e123-6. ©2017 AACR.

Figure 1. PODS Database

Workflow overview for the development of gene pages. Blue boxes indicate sections included on the website for each gene. Orange boxes indicate resources outside of the Precision Oncology Decision Support (PODS) database that are used to help generate gene page content. Solid lines indicate workflow progression; bidirectional arrows indicate processes that flow in both directions; dashed arrows indicate resources and databases used during that step.