Companion diagnostics: changing patient management

At the European Multidisciplinary Cancer Congress (EMCC), held in Stockholm in September 2011, a recurring theme in many of the workshops was personalised medicine, including the latest developments in prognostic and predictive biomarkers. Such markers, it is hoped, will enable clinicians to use available resources to best effects—by offering treatments to only those patients most likely to benefit, or by avoiding treatments that are likely to cause toxicities with limited benefit. The emergence of novel diagnostic tools that can distinguish subsets of patients with different response to treatment is likely to result in a paradigm shift in the way in which we manage cancer in the future. This report focuses on some of the key developments and challenges in providing a truly individualised approach to therapy, as presented at EMCC 2011.