Oncology

Cancer is the vanguard disease area for application of precision medicine.  The intersection of genetics, immunology and stem cell biology has tremendous immediate and future applications to individualized, molecularly rationalized cancer treatments.  At Columbia, a strong foundation has been established onto which strategic investments can be leveraged to propel us to a national leadership role in precision cancer care.  In collaboration with the Department of Pathology, we have established NY State and CLIA-compliant clinical genomic sequencing capabilities including a 450-cancer gene panel, whole exome sequencing and RNA sequencing.  

The vision for the future is to build an enterprise-wide precision cancer medicine program where all patients’ tumors will be fully characterized on a molecular level to facilitate enrollment onto precisely targeted clinical trials. Currently, this approach is already being pioneered to Pediatric Oncology patients through the Precision in Pediatric Sequencing (PIPseq) program. In this clinical program, genomic data has impacted clinic decision-making in 65% of all cases, including the identification of actionable alterations and avoidance of ineffective therapies. 

For more information on PIPseq visit their website here.

For more information on oncology at Columbia visit the Herbert Irving Cancer Center.

For more information on Precision Cancer Medicine click here.