Breast cancer: individualized diagnosis for tailored treatment

Excerpt

Breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease, and the biologic behaviors, natural history, and response to therapy vary widely from patient to patient. Thus, each treatment strategy should ideally be selected in accordance with the probability of success based on the individual characteristics of the tumor. Recently, many powerful tools have become available for the purpose of dissecting the biological complexity of breast cancer with a view toward tailored treatment. Therefore, there is an increasing need to determine individual tumor characteristics. In the presidential symposium “Breast Cancer: Individualized Diagnosis for Tailored Treatment” held at the 15th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Breast Cancer Society, six participants presented their updated results and reviewed the individualization of breast cancer with respect to biochemistry, pathology, diagnostic radiology, medical oncology, radiation oncology, and surgery. …