ABSTRACT
With approximately 14 million new cases and more than 8 million deaths each year worldwide, cancer is a major global health issue [1,2]. The vast majority of cancers develop as a consequence of inborn or acquired genetic mutations. Each tumor type possesses its own molecular specificity and changes. Despite recent advances with clinico-genomics and chemotherapeutic treatments, most patients still receive non-personalized treatment and many cancers remain incurable. Precision oncology requires novel molecular descriptors of cancer, and attempts have been made to redefine common cancer phenotypes according to their genomic features [2,3]. However, these strategies are slow and costly, and do not account for tumor heterogeneity and evolution. This clearly points to a need for rapid, point-of-care tissue-based diagnostics that can assist clinical decision making. Early screening, preoperative diagnostics, surgical pathology, intraoperative diagnostics and postoperative follow-up are all key to the routine implementation of P4-medicine [3]. This system medicine approach critically depends on the availability of smart, speedy, specific, selective and sensitive diagnostics (S5-diagnostics).
