What is the Clinical Relevance of Gene Profiling?
The Microarray (gene chips) is a device that measures differences in gene sequence, gene expression or protein expression in biological samples. Microarrays may be used to compare gene or protein expression under different conditions, such as cells found in cancer. Hence the headlong rush to develop tests to identify molecular predisposing mechansims whose presence still does not guarantee that a drug will be effective for an individual patient. Nor can they, for any patient or even large group of patients, discriminate the potential for clinical activity among different agents of the same class. Genetic profiles are able to help doctors determine which patients will probably develop cancer, and those who will most likely relapse. However, it cannot be suitable for specific treatments for individual patients. In the new paradigm of requiring a companion diagnostic as a condition for approval of new targeted therapies, the pressure is so great that the companion diagnostics they’ve appr
