Recent advances in genomic technologies have revealed enormous complexities and uniqueness of human physiology. Although enormous efforts are being made to apply this knowledge to enhance the efficacy and safety of many marketed therapeutic agents, still the drug discovery process is still slowly evolving. In oncology, the concept of precision medicine is being utilized to accelerate the drug discovery process by patient/disease stratifications. Moreover, several drugs discoveries programs are gaining accelerated approval for rare/orphan diseases of unmet medical need. 

Using precision medicine many attempts are made to differentiate the responder from non-responders via genetic predictors. The success of patient stratification is solely based on genomic driver-based stratification. Additionally, precision medicine-based approaches with genomic analysis can reveal the mechanism of therapy failure. Although targeted therapies often elicit profound initial patient responses, these effects are transient due to residual disease leading to acquired resistance. How tumors transition between drug responsiveness, tolerance, and resistance, especially in the absence of pre-existing subclones, remains unclear. Moreover, using technologies that enable precision medicine we can elucidate rational combination therapy to alter tumor microenvironment and alter tumor resistance.

Learning Objectives: 

1. Use cases of precision medicine in the drug discovery process
2. Accelerating the drug discovery process through precision combinatorial therapy to modulate therapy resistance