Oral Cancer and Prospects of Precision Medicine

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Precision medicine is a systematic therapeutic approach that tailors the overall treatment process as per an individual's unique characteristics; taking into account the genomic makeup and lifestyle. This approach has shown promising results in treating certain types of cancers, including that of highly heterogeneous oral cancer. Oral cancer is a type of head and neck cancer mainly caused by poor oral hygiene, alcohol, and tobacco abuse, and promotes HPV infection. The conventional approaches for the treatment of oral cancer often rely on surgery, chemotherapy, and/or radiotherapy. Now, precision medicine, with the advent of newer diagnostic techniques, enables healthcare professionals to diagnose the disease early and treat the patient with appropriate medicines and optimized doses. This ensures overall safety while minimizing undesirable exposure to not-so-effective drug regimes. After a brief introduction to precision medicine, this chapter details genetic mutations as targets for precision medicine and the advantages of this approach in oral cancer treatment. It is envisaged that this approach offers improved efficacy, safety, reduced side-effects, and prepares the body’s immune response against oral cancer. Targeting specific proteins, such as EGFR and HER2 to suppress tumor growth or make cancer cells more susceptible to the immune system’s combat mechanism is also discussed followed by an overview of various drugs that are being used to treat patients who are positive for HER2 and EGFR. Various challenges and limitations of precision medicine and future prospects for research in this area are highlighted.