Exploiting genetic complexity in cancer to improve therapeutic strategies

Advances in genome sequencing technologies are enabling researchers to make rapid progress in defining the entire repertoire of causal genetic changes in cancer. The response of patients with cancer to therapy is often highly variable and there is an increasing number of examples where mutations in cancer genomes have been shown to have a profound effect on the clinical effectiveness of drugs. An urgent challenge for the research and clinical communities is how to translate these genomic data sets into new and improved therapeutic strategies for the treatment of patients. The use of large-scale cell line-based drug screens to identify genomic ‘biomarkers’ of drug response for the stratification of patients has the potential to transform how patients with cancer are treated.