Innovative personalized medicine in gastric cancer: time to move forward

Abstract

Globally, gastric cancer (GC) is the second leading cancer cause of death. To date, only one targeted therapy trial generated positive survival outcomes in a selected population among many targeted therapy trials. This trial showed the addition of trastuzumab to fluoropyrimidine/platinum chemotherapy as first-line chemotherapy for human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-positive GC that resulted in an overall survival (OS) benefit. The increasing use of next generation sequencing approach to genomically profile GC patients allows the identification of many more GC patients who could benefit from specific targeted agents. Here we provide a comprehensive review of targeted therapy trials in GC and discuss future potential actionable driver mutations in GC.

Keywords: actionable mutations; chemotherapy; gastric cancer; molecularly targeted agents; personalized medicine.