Let’s get personal

Totally personalised medicine is on the horizon. THE survival rate for women diagnosed with breast cancer in North America and Europe has been rising dramatically over the past decade. You can hardly say this for any other cancer. Instead of just learning about your cancer, its stage and its grade, doctors will want a complete molecular signature of your cancer as well as how your normal genes affect you react to drugs. In part, this is due to earlier detection, which results from greater access to regular breast screening mammography. (This is a special x-ray to detect very early, potentially curable breast cancer.) Sadly, we have not done so well in this area in Malaysia. Women continue to present to their doctors with breast cancer that is far too advanced for cure. Moreover only a minority of women in Malaysia above 40... [read full story]