Precision Medicine in Head and Neck Cancer

Abstract

Technological advancement in human genome analysis and ICT (information & communication technologies) brought ‘precision medicine’ into our clinical practice. Precision medicine is a novel medical approach that provides personalized treatments tailored to each individual by precisely segmenting patient populations, based on robust data including a person’s genetic information, disease information, lifestyle information, etc. Precision medicine has a potential to be applied to treating a range of tumors, in addition to non-small cell lung cancer, in which precision oncology has been actively practiced. In this article, we are reviewing precision medicine in head and neck cancer (HNC) with focus on tumor agnostic biomarkers and treatments such as <i>NTRK</i>, MSI-H/dMMR, TMB-H and <i>BRAF</i> V600E, all of which were recently approved by U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).