title: Evidence for the importance of personalized molecular profiling in pancreatic cancer.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  There is a growing body of evidence that targeted gene therapy holds great promise for the future treatment of cancer. A crucial step in this therapy is the accurate identification of appropriate candidate genes/pathways for targeted treatment. One approach is to identify variant genes/pathways that are significantly enriched in groups of afflicted individuals relative to control subjects. However, if there are multiple molecular pathways to the same cancer, the molecular determinants of the disease may be heterogeneous among individuals and possibly go undetected by group analyses.
  
  
  METHODS
  In an effort to explore this question in pancreatic cancer, we compared the most significantly differentially expressed genes/pathways between cancer and control patient samples as determined by group versus personalized analyses.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We found little to no overlap between genes/pathways identified by gene expression profiling using group analyses relative to those identified by personalized analyses.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our results indicate that personalized and not group molecular profiling is the most appropriate approach for the identification of putative candidates for targeted gene therapy of pancreatic and perhaps other cancers with heterogeneous molecular etiology.
authors: From the *Integrated Cancer Research Center, School of Biology, and Parker H. Petit Institute of Bioengineering and Biosciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta; and †Cancer Treatment Centers of America SE Regional Facility, Newnan, GA.
authors: Loukia N
authors: LN
authors: Lili
authors: Lilya V
authors: LV
authors: Matyunina
authors: L DeEtte
authors: LD
authors: Walker
authors: George W
authors: GW
authors: Daneker
authors: John F
authors: JF
authors: McDonald
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D005260:Female; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D015972:Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D058990:Molecular Targeted Therapy / Q000379:methods; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D010190:Pancreatic Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000235:genetics*; D057285:Precision Medicine / Q000379:methods; D015398:Signal Transduction / Q000235:genetics*