Figure 1

Cancer Precision Medicine, Genomic-directed Medicine, Personalized Medicine (herein, PMED) has been introduced to human cancer patients over the last 20 years and is now receding from the heightened promise at its introduction. There are lessons, including successes and failures from this human experience, that can be used to better deliver this future of cancer care to pet animals. For the purposes of this presentation the use of the term PMED will focus on therapeutic decision-making derived from patient-specific genomic analyses.

The allure of PMED and the opportunity to use genomic medicine to help treat cancer patients is compelling; discussions surrounding the topic of PMED are now featured in mainstream culture including super bowl commercials, lay public articles and broadcasts and are of great interest in the oncology community. The enthusiasm in the field is fully justified by the experiences in human lung cancer; however, to date the success of PMED in human lung cancer remains the exception and not the rule. Not surprisingly, the enthusiasm around PMED has found its way to veterinary medicine. PMED is being offered to the field of veterinary oncology largely in the absence of evidence and with the presumption that the human PMED experience has sufficiently addressed most of the questions surrounding its implementation and delivery. This is not the case. Nonetheless, an opportunity exists for the veterinary oncology field to take lessons from the successes and failures of delivering PMED to human cancer patients, so that the benefits of PMED can be understood and better realized by veterinary patients.