UICC World Cancer Congress 2006

Objective: To present a vision of the future of Pathology in the post-genomic era of personalized medicine.

Methods: Compilation and summarization of tissue-based, Pathology-dependent strategic initiatives at the National Cancer Institute that will enable personalized approaches to cancer medicine in the future.

Results: The National Cancer Institute's vision of cancer medicine in the future is focused on a personalized approach to each cancer patient and their unique tumor that would maximize the efficacy and minimize adverse responses to specific therapies. This vision is based on the soon-to-be-realized ability to derive full molecular characterization of normal and neoplastic tissue in a rapid and inexpensive manner and, based on clinical responses known to be associated with given molecular patterns, customize therapeutic and patient management decisions accordingly. The vision includes the ability to detect molecular markers in human specimen (biomarkers) that will serve as screening tools for the detection of incipient cancers and for monitoring therapeutic efficacy in treated tumors. Pathology is at the epicenter of such a vision because biospecimens from patients will be the source of these molecular data. The realization of this vision requires establishing evidence-based standards of human biospecimen acquisition, processing, and storage that will insure consistent, reproducible molecular analysis data for pathologic characterization. These standards will enable the translational research of the present and become the standard of care of the future.