siliconindia | | November 20198in my opinionDr. BS Ajaikumar, CEO, HealthCare Global Enterprises With an aim to make advanced cancer care assessable to all, Dr. Ajai founded HCG and ever since has been the driving force behind the company's growth. He is a recipient of the Karnataka Rajyotsava Award.GENOMICS & FUTURE OF ONCOLOGY IN INDIAhe rising number of cancer cases in India is a rising cause for concern. With nearly 1.5 mil-lion new cases, cancer has emerged as a major health challenge. This number is expected to double over the next two decades. The number of cancer cases among women is more than men in India, with breast, cervical, ovarian and uterine cancers making-up more than 70 percent of cancer among women.Understanding cancer has always been a challenge, and that has led to poor outcomes, but there has been a dramatic change in recent years. A better understanding of the disease, genomics, immunology of cancer, and with the technology advancements, we can target and treat the cancer cells solely, thereby avoiding the normal tissues. In spite of recent advances in the treatment of cancer with the advent of better surgical expertise, radiotherapy techniques and chemotherapeutic regimes over the past 20 years, the outcome and five-year survival of most advanced malig-nancies has improved only marginally. Many major drugs have an initial response, but the non-responder rates vary between 30 percent and 70 percent. Detection of cancer at an early stage, understanding the biology of cancer, strat-ifying the patients into responders and no-responders to treatment enable us to get precision medicine in place with an accurate diagnosis, rationalize treatment decision, iden-tify prognostic biomarkers and prognosticate the disease.Traditionally, surgery, radiation, chemotherapy or tar-geted therapy is the standard way of treatment for any form of cancer-based on retrospection. But today, it has changed to precision medicine. This means that when we deal with a patient, we can study and analyse the best possible treat-ment for that patient based on their predictive analysis that TDr. BS Ajaikumar, CEO
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