The first meeting of the Austrian Expert Panel for Molecular Cancer Profiling

Personalized medicine is rapidly changing the daily routine for the diagnostic work-up and treatment of cancer patients. Several clinical studies and programs are ongoing worldwide to implement personalized anticancer therapies particularly for relapsed/refractory malignancies. On 28 October 2016, the first meeting of the Austrian Expert Panel for Molecular Cancer Profiling was held in Salzburg with the purpose to identify clinical studies and registry programs focusing on comprehensive molecular tumor profiling and personalized cancer therapies in Austria. Representatives of the four Austrian academic centers and from two teaching hospitals were invited to present and debate the current status, challenges, and perspectives in precision oncology. To date, three clinical programs are recruiting patients with relapsed/refractory malignancies in Austria: the ONCO-T-PROFILE program at the Medical University of Innsbruck, the platform MONDTI at the Medical University of Vienna, and the ICT (Individualized Cancer Treatment) phase II trial at the Medical University of Graz. The aim of both research programs and the phase II trial is to investigate the efficacy of molecular profile-based personalized therapies in refractory and relapsed metastatic cancer patients. Furthermore, in cooperation with the AGMT (Study Group of Medical Tumor Therapy), a clinical registry will be established to monitor and to analyze the benefit of molecular profiling in real life.