NGS assisted personalized medicine in cancer therapy has already underway.
Here is one of the first clinical example published in 2010: http://genomebiology.com/content/11/8/R82
Key points:
1) Rare cancer with no standard chemo therapy
2) Initial treatment with radiation therapy and EGFR inhibitor (patient had
high EGFR expression) failed to stabilize disease progression
3) DNA sequencing + RNA expression + pathway analysis identified genes in
known cancer pathways with CNV and expression change compared with normal
tissue and other type of cancer cells to try identify disease causing
mutation
4) Screen genes for potential drug targets in Drug-Bank database and
identified RET
5) Used RET inhibitor to treat patient (off-label use) and stabilized
disease for 4 month before the tumor became drug resistant
