The Promise and Challenges of Personalized Medicine in Hematologic Malignancies

Personalized medicine in hematologic malignancies seeks to individualize cancer care and treatment decisions based upon features unique to each patient. Currently though, for acute leukemia, lymphoma, and myeloma, we typically practice group medicine, where we assign individuals to prognostic groups that dictate treatment choices that are uniform within the group. Diagnostic testing including immunophenotyping, cytogenetics, molecular genetics, and new genomics, have allowed the definition of new leukemia sub-entities which, has translated into specific therapies. Here, We discuss how the precision medicine paradigm might be applied to the care of leukemia patients by focusing on the potential roles of targeting therapy by patient-specific somatic mutations and aberrant pathways. A new promising approach is the activation of patients’ T cells directed against their own leukemic blast cells either through a bi specific antibody, or chimeric antigen receptor modified T cells.

Keywords:

Personalized medicine , Hematologic malignancy , Leukemia , Targeted therapies