Oncology & Cancer

Diagnosis of diseases especially neoplasms has witnessed a monumental change in its approach. Up until a few years back, the focus lied on histomorphological diagnosis and a blanket treatment was administered based on the disease. With careful understanding of difference in clinical course and treatment response in different patients suffering from the same disease, there arose a need to understand tumor biology to prognosticate and individualize treatment. Research on genetic basis of various neoplasms highlighted different tumor biology and actionable mutation targets in the same disease thus giving rise to the need for detecting these mutations and development of antibodies/molecules which can target them. Hematolymphoid malignancies were one of the earliest to be decoded for different tumor biology, prognosis, response to conventional treatment and need for different treatment strategies based on the underlying genetic mutation. We look into the paradigm shift in the diagnosis of these neoplasms, how the approach has progressively changed from diagnosis based on morphology to present times, classifying prognosis and personalizing treatment, based on the underlying genetic biology.