Precision and Personalized Medicine

Precision Pathology

The role of predictive pathology or the accurate assessment of morphology at the microscopic level. In breast cancer, this has been most useful where histologic attributes such as the classification of tubular and cribriform carcinoma dictates surgery while neoadjuvant studies suggest that patients with lobular carcinoma are not likely to benefit from chemotherapy. The next level of 'personalized pathology' at the tissue-cellular level is the use of 'protein biomarker panels' to classify the disease process and ultimately drive tumor characterization and treatment. Precision pathology will focus on the evolution of predictive pathology from a subjective, 'opinion-based' approach to a quantitative science. The individual components of the precise pathology platform including advanced image analysis, biomarker quantitation with mathematical modelling and the integration with fluid-based (i.e. blood, urine) analytics as drivers of next generation precise patient phenotyping.