Personalized Medicine in Oncology: Current Status and Future Prospects

Abstract

Personalized medicine, also called precision medicine, is an approach to disease prevention and treatment that accounts for individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle. In oncology it has driven a decisive shift away from empirical, one-size-fits-all chemotherapy toward biomarker-directed care in which the molecular profile of a tumour, rather than its anatomical site alone, guides treatment selection. This review summarizes the current status and future prospects of personalized oncology. It outlines the biological rationale rooted in the genomic basis of cancer and the concept of oncogene addiction, and describes the enabling technologies - next-generation sequencing, comprehensive genomic profiling, large reference atlases, and liquid biopsy that have made molecular characterization feasible in routine care. The clinical achievements of targeted therapy are reviewed across haematological and solid tumours, together with the advent of immune checkpoint blockade and the first histology-independent, biomarkerdefined drug approvals. Innovations in clinical trial design, including basket and umbrella trials and frameworks for ranking the clinical actionability of molecular alterations, are considered alongside cellular therapies such as chimeric antigen receptor T cells. The review also addresses persistent challenges drug resistance, tumour heterogeneity, the still-modest proportion of patients who benefit, and issues of cost and equitable access before considering future directions in multi-omics, minimal residual disease monitoring, combination strategies, and the integration of artificial intelligence. Realizing the full promise of personalized oncology will require continued biological discovery, pragmatic trial designs, and deliberate attention to accessibility.