Universal Genomic Testing: The next step in oncological decision-making or a dead end street?

The concept of 'personalised medicine' aims at allocating patients to different treatment options based on individual characteristics to optimise treatment benefit and side effects. In oncology, personalised treatments coupled to biomarkers have led to the approval of targeted agents with high anti-tumour activity. However, these therapies are often limited to narrow, molecularly defined subsets of patients with a specific morphomolecular tumour profile. Recently, it became obvious that the same molecular alteration might drive oncogenesis in many different tumours, and it might be beneficial to target the alteration in a histology informed but entity-overarching way. Consequently, Universal Genomic Testing (UGT) of tumours encompassing panel sequencing to whole-exome and transcriptome sequencing is propagated to revolutionise oncology. This article will describe the developments leading to identification and application of potential biomarkers using UGT. On this basis, it will review the clinical evidence of this approach and summarise recommendations for the ongoing evaluation of UGT as the next step in oncological decision-making. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.