Oncogenomics: a personalized cancer therapy

Abstract

The vast majority of cancer cases are due to environmental risk factors, many of which (but not all) being controllable lifestyle choices and thus preventable. It has been suggested that more than 30% of cancer deaths could be prevented by avoiding risk factors including: tobacco, overweight, obesity, insufficient or/and inappropriate diet, physical inactivity, alcohol, transmitted infections, and air and water pollution. However, not all environmental causes are controllable such as naturally occurring background electromagnetic radiation. This article is concerned with those cancers that are due to genetics. In a companion article, I will discuss the case of cancers caused by epigenetics and ecogenetics and their oncological treatments (which I shall refer to as oncoepigenomics and oncoecogenomics, respectively).