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Enabling personalized cancer medicine through analysis of gene-expression patterns

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Abstract

Therapies for patients with cancer have changed gradually over the past decade, moving away from the administration of broadly acting cytotoxic drugs towards the use of more-specific therapies that are targeted to each tumour. To facilitate this shift, tests need to be developed to identify those individuals who require therapy and those who are most likely to benefit from certain therapies. In particular, tests that predict the clinical outcome for patients on the basis of the genes expressed by their tumours are likely to increasingly affect patient management, heralding a new era of personalized medicine.

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Figure 1: Predicting disease outcome by using complex gene-expression tests.
Figure 2: Conventional and molecular diagnostic testing for cancer.
Figure 3: Short cuts to the development of drug-response biomarkers.

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Acknowledgements

We thank L. Wessels and P. Borst for discussions. Our work was supported by grants from the Centre for Biomedical Genetics, the Cancer Genomics Centre and the Dutch Cancer Society.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Agendia BV, Louwesweg 6, Amsterdam, 1066 EC, the Netherlands

    Laura J. van 't Veer & René Bernards

  2. Division of Pathology, the Netherlands Cancer Institute, Plesmanlaan 121, Amsterdam, 1066 CX, the Netherlands

    Laura J. van 't Veer

  3. Cancer Genomics Centre, the Netherlands Cancer Institute, Plesmanlaan 121, Amsterdam, 1066 CX, the Netherlands

    Laura J. van 't Veer & René Bernards

  4. Centre for Biomedical Genetics, the Netherlands Cancer Institute, Plesmanlaan 121, Amsterdam, 1066 CX, the Netherlands

    René Bernards

  5. Division of Molecular Carcinogenesis, the Netherlands Cancer Institute, Plesmanlaan 121, Amsterdam, 1066 CX, the Netherlands

    René Bernards

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  1. Laura J. van 't Veer
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Competing interests

L.J.v.V. and R.B. are employees of, and hold shares in, Agendia. Agendia markets MammaPrint, which is discussed in this review article.

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Reprints and permissions information is available at http://npg.nature.com/reprints.

Correspondence should be addressed to R.B. (r.bernards@nki.nl).

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van 't Veer, L., Bernards, R. Enabling personalized cancer medicine through analysis of gene-expression patterns. Nature 452, 564–570 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06915

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