Next Generation Sequencing in Clinical Oncology: Applications, Challenges and Promises: A Review Article

BACKGROUND: The aim of this mini-review is to highlight the potential applications of next-generation sequencing technology to the field of clinical oncology with respect to genetic diagnosis, cancer classification, predictive biomarkers and personalized medicine. METHODS: Scientific databases were searched to collect relative data. RESULTS: Effective systematic analysis of whole-genome sequence and whole-exome sequence of tumors, targeted genome profiling, transcriptome sequencing and tumor-normal comparisons can be performed using NGS in order to diagnosis of several types of cancer. CONCLUSION: NGS technology can be powerful enough to discover new and infrequent gene alterations, identify hereditary cancer mutation carriers and provide a reliable molecular portrait of wide range of cancers in a quick and cost-effective manner.