IS GENOMICS MAKING RARE CANCERS COMMON AND COMMON CANCERS RARE?

Abstract

While rare cancers account for a large percentage of total cancer cases, there has been little improvement in the overall survival rates for patients with rare cancers. This can partially be attributed to the difficulties in conducting clinical trials for rare cancers, since it can be challenging to accrue sufficient patient numbers of a rare subtype to demonstrate drug efficacy. A number of rare cancer types however, share genetic drivers with common cancers, which can be therapeutically targeted. Therefore, if patients are stratified by the molecular and genetic characteristics of their tumour, instead of stratifying them by their tumour type, targeted medicine could be a more achievable a..