Recent advances in personalized medicine and associated companion diagnostic therapeutics have led to an increased utilization of genetic markers in oncology therapy selection.  The rapid acceleration of biomarker driven therapy has been widely accepted into clinical guidelines based upon proven clinical utility and unprecedented patient outcomes.  During this presentation, a discussion of processes used for tissue acquisition and processing, pre-analytics, biomarker testing, and result reporting will be presented.  A special emphasis will be given to the discussing the power and pitfalls of common biomarker testing techniques such as real-time PCR companion diagnostic testing, immunohistochemistry, FISH, and next-generation sequencing panels. The goal of this presentation is to help improve the oncology patient journey by increasing access to high quality biomarker testing.

Learing Objectives:

• To understand the fundamentals of personalized medicine and companion diagnostics
• To review current therapeutic products associated with companion and complementary diagnostics
• To gain an understanding of the future of personalized medicine in oncology