Dr. Sotomayor on Personalized Medicine Preventing Cancer

Eduardo Sotomayor, MD, the Susan and John Sykes Endowed Chair in Hematologic Malignancies at Moffitt Cancer Center, discusses how personalized medicine may eventually help with preventing cancer.

One of the major advances in understanding genetic variations of tumors is next-generation sequencing, Sotomayor explains. This allows practitioners to perform a detailed analysis of tumors or cancer cells, specifically looking at any abnormal genes. This advancement has led researchers to understand many basic causes of cancer.

As a next step, Sotomayor says researchers should now examine lesions that have the potential to become malignant, and work to identify biomarkers and genetic variations in them. This advancement would take place in patients at high risk of developing cancer in the next 1 to 2 years; therefore, an invention could take place with preventative measures and lifestyle changes.