Personalized Medicine: How Statistics Helps Not to Drown in the Flood of Data

The number of new cancer diagnoses and the number of people dying from cancer are rising continuously in most countries around the world. It is very difficult to find the optimal treatment for a particular cancer case, because cancer is not a homogeneous disease, but many different manifestations exist, all of which are grouped together under the general label ‘cancer’. However, statistical methods can help identify groups of patients that are similar in terms of genetic characteristics. For some such groups, a targeted therapy can take into account the genetics of the patients for a more promising treatment.