Biomarkers & Clinical Research

Biography

Biography: Chee Gee See

Abstract

The identification of genomic targets in cancer pathways has opened up a whole vista of personalised medicine development in recent years. The fast-tracking of such targets from discovery to drug launch has been truly astonishing, as exemplified by the 2007 initial discovery of the EML4-ALK oncogene to the 2011 FDA approval of Pfizer\'s targeted ALK+Xalkori for NSCLC. Whilst these advances are nothing short of brilliant, resistance to such targeted pathways indicate the pitfalls of single target or canonical pathway approaches. Resistance to targeted therapies has emerged as one of the greatest challenges to the personalised medicine approach. To even begin to tackle the issue of resistance, a complete picture of both the canonical and non-canonical signalling pathways in tumor biology is required. Such a complete molecular profile is now possible and this would indicate if our drug is hitting the target and also what alternative pathways the tumor might be engaging to bypass the effects of the drug. Author will present data from proteomics-based strategies to identify global signalling pathways and will demonstrate how this strategy aids decision making on the effectiveness of the targeted oncology drug and in optimizing potential combinatorial options to combat resistance. These strategies and how they are implemented clinically will be discussed. This strategy represents a very innovative and eminently actionable clinical approach to tumor resistance.