Genomics-Based Cancer Theranostics

Cancer cells have advantages over normal cells of selective growth and survival, and genetic mutations are the root of those advantages. Over the past decade, especially since the advent of next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies, also known as second generation, in the mid-2000s, genomic landscapes for the most common forms of human cancer have been revealed, and such discoveries are benefiting early tumor diagnosis, prognosis, and treatments. Today, third generation sequencing platforms are entering the markets and bringing a new wave of discoveries as they allow a much longer sequencing read than the second generation platforms. This chapter reviews the advanced biotechnology and computational biology efforts necessary to make sense of the astronomical amount of cancer genomics data to identify novel biomarkers for developing targeted imaging probes and therapeutics, and clarify the achievements, opportunities, and challenges for genomics-based cancer theranostics.