Now that we’ve established the basics behind next generation
sequencing (NGS), we can more fully delve into its implications. If you missed the last post, check it
out here. In the current post
we’ll uncover if and how NGS can be used in the clinic.
The need to sequence DNA faster and cheaper stems partly from
our desire to impact patient diseases.
The future of cancer therapy lies in our ability to target pathways (and
the proteins involved) that are altered in cancer cells. But as we’ve shown, each cancer is
unique and the genes involved in that process can vary between patients and
even within that same patient. In
a recent publication, using next generation sequencing techniques, the authors
analyzed a series of patients with pancreatic cancer and assessed whether
looking at them as a group versus looking at their mutations as individuals was
more advantageous when deciding treatment options. They compared pathways altered in individuals to those that
were significantly altered across the group and found little overlap suggesting
that grouping patients may not provide the most valuable information when
deciding treatment options1. Therefore, personalized medicine, or individual gene expression profiling is
critical to the acquisition of clinically significant information. And the ability to do this lies in next-generation
sequencing.
