INTERVIEW // ULTRASOUND // Research
Collaboration in Precision Biopsy Research Aims to Improve Cancer Care Patient Pathways How academia and industry are working together to improve personalised medicine by fusing real-time ultrasound with CT information to enable fewer, more targeted biopsies
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he one-size-fits-all approach to cancer, where everyone with the same type gets the same treatment, is no longer the state of the art. Personalised medicine has enabled a more targeted approach to oncology where the genetic characteristics of a tumour are understood earlier to enable a more targeted and specifically tailored course of treatment. In order to determine the genetic character of lesions, it is necessary to biopsy them. But where
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there is heterogeneity, knowing that the potentially different genomic elements have been sampled is of course a challenge. Furthermore, because of the invasive nature of these procedures and the potential for patient discomfort, minimising the number of biopsies is always preferred. New research, pioneered by Professor Evis Sala from the Department of Radiology at the University of Cambridge and co-lead of the Cancer
