Next-Generation Sequencing:
Revolutionizing Patient Care in Your Oncology Practice
The age of precision medicine, driven by the capabilities of Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS), is here! The term precision medicine describes medical advances and approaches based on the analysis of an individual’s genetic information and is used as part of their clinical care to help predict how they will respond to a given treatment regimen.
Precision medicine has the potential to offer new possibilities: from prediction of a patient’s cancer risk, to earlier diagnoses and development of novel targeted therapies. In order to translate a patient’s genomic information in a clinically meaningful way, it is essential for oncologists to become acquainted with the capabilities of NGS and how it can facilitate precision medicine in their clinical practice.
For the numerous types of cancer, NGS can offer the ability to simultaneously screen for multiple gene variants without a battery of testing. Using just a very small amount of sample, NGS high-throughput technology analyzes millions of fragments of DNA in parallel with high efficiency, low costs, and short processing times.
NGS is helping to improve cancer diagnostics, prognosis, selection of a more precise and personalized treatment plan, and more accurate treatment adjustments when needed.