Neurologic Cancers and Personalized Medicine

With the advances in high-throughput genetic analysis platforms, robustpreclinical small-animal models, and efficient clinical trials, it is becomingpossible to envision a time when the treatment of human neurologic diseasesare personalized. The emergence of precision medicine will require theidentification of subgroups of patients most likely to respond to specificbiologically based therapies. This stratification only becomes possible whenthe determinants that contribute to disease heterogeneity become more fullyelucidated. The defining factors that underlie disease heterogeneity relevantto the potential for individualized brain tumor (optic pathway glioma)treatments arising in the common single-gene cancer predispositionsyndrome, neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1). In this regard, NF1 is posited as amodel genetic condition to establish a workable paradigm for actualizingprecision therapeutics for other neurologic disorders.

Keywords:

Neurologic , Cancer , Personalized , Medicine , High-throughput , Brain tumor , NF1