ABSTRACT
The treatment of cancer will change considerably within the next decade especially due to the development of new improved targeted drugs. The development of these drugs will be depended on a parallel development of a diagnostic assay, as the drugs will only be useful if a pharmacodiagnostic test is able to identify the patients likely to respond. In personalized cancer medicine, drug and diagnostics are linked closely together in order to match the patient with the most optimal treatment. Despite the fact that the concept of personalized medicine was only introduced in the late 1990’s the development towards a more individualized drug therapy was made already several decades ago. The discovery of the estrogen receptor in the 1960’s and the introduction of the anti-estrogen tamoxifen in the 1970’s paved the way for a more individualized treatment of patients within breast cancer. Since then a number of targeted drugs have been introduced which are guided by a pharmacodiagnostic test, the best known example among these is the monoclonal antibody trastuzumab (Herceptin®, Genentech). Co-development of a drug and diagnostics will be the future development model in stratified and personalized medicine, and we will see more and more drugs being developed amid for smaller segments of cancer patients in order to increase the treatment benefit of drug therapy.
