What is precision medicine and its role in pancreatic cancer?

Precision medicine is a "developing approach to illness treatment and prevention that takes individual diversity in genes, environment, and lifestyle into account for each person." Doctors and researchers will be able to anticipate more correctly whether treatment and prevention methods for a specific disease will work in groups of people using this methodology. It differs from a one-size-fits-all strategy, in which disease treatment and prevention techniques are designed for the typical person with little regard for individual differences. Patients with pancreatic cancer who are matched to relevant molecularly guided treatments have a higher overall survival rate than those who do not have actionable mutations or who do not receive targeted therapy. Characterizing cancer mutations has the purpose of identifying medicines that target such mutations and slow cancer progression. However, there are few examples of the benefits in the real world. (Sources: medlineplus.gov )

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