“What you now see is that every cancer is a rare cancer.”
So says Emile Voest, professor of medical oncology at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, who was writing in the journal Nature. Voest was highlighting a revolutionary change in cancer treatment over the past decade: the advancement of genomics.
Genomics is the study of how genes interact with one another and the environment. It has already had a massive impact in oncology. For example, Voest notes that 12 years ago, lung cancer was classified as either small cell or non-small cell. Today, it’s identified by nearly 30 genomic mutations or changes.