Sharing data: a requirement for expanding precision oncology

Identification of somatic genomic variants in tumor DNA to identify matched targeted agents (MTAs—drugs that are supposed to target the abnormal encoded proteins) is nowadays accessible to patients from several companies and may be funded by Health Insurances. A lot of cancer centers have developed institutional precision profiling programs. Beyond the fact that using molecular profiling is feasible in the clinic, what is the optimal goal of this genomic medicine? The level of outcome improvement in studies investigating the impact of MTAs on a broad variety of advanced cancers (pathology-agnostic therapies) have proven to be limited. Reports of precision medicine clinical trials [including the prospective randomized SHIVA trial (1)] demonstrated minimal impact of MTAs on large population of patients with advanced cancers (even though the molecular profile of each patient’s tumor was established with a specific mandatory biopsy) (2).