Over the last two decades, targeted therapy and immunotherapy has emerged as key treatments for various cancers, though their benefits are limited to certain patients and often accompanied by drug resistance and significant toxicity. Advances in biomarkers related to the tumor immune microenvironment hold promise for improving precision immuno-oncology. The game-changing drug efficacy/response prediction technology—PGA (Patient-derived Gene expression-informed Anticancer drug efficacy)—help identify the best-performing drugs that individual patients most likely will respond to, especially for those patients unresponsive to targeted therapy or immunotherapy.

While the biomarker testing or companion diagnostics, has long been a symbol of precision medicine, its limitations are becoming increasingly apparent. The lack of full-spectrum patient coverage puts biomarker testing and precision therapy at a significant disadvantage in the clinical reality where they can only benefit 10-20 percent of cancer patients. Without targeted therapy, those patient non-responders would be vulnerable to the lacking of drug efficacy/response prediction tool, and therefore limiting treatment options.

While targeted therapy remains effective in many scenarios, the benefit gap between responders and non-responders is growing. The rapid advancements in tumor clonal evolution and disease progression, including low response rate, drug resistance, metastasis and relapse, are making the situation more dire.

These situations have shifted the balance of power in the fight against cancer, and for the first time since first targeted drug approval, the revolution in precision medicine is being questioned. Oncology, in particular, is feeling the strain as the fleet of biomarker-targeted drugs—good though they are—lacks the therapeutic edge or diversity to benefit the entire patient population and fails to deliver their promise of no patient left behind!

Most significantly, in the event of therapeutic exhaustion, clinicians will struggle to sustain any treatment plans beyond standard of care.

The formal recognition of the need for a drug efficacy/response prediction technology like PGA for patient non-responders marks a shift in precision oncology. It reflects an awareness of the real-world challenges facing the clinicians and the necessity of adapting modern diagnostic capabilities to inform therapeutic decisions.

The PGA technology introduces exclusive drug efficacy/response prediction capabilities through gene-drug mapping. Predictive drug response algorithms will optimize drug matching accuracy based on personalized gene signature. Designed to benefit the patients who are not responding to current precision medicine, PGA marks a significant development of technology innovation into a transformative system aligned with modern clinical requirements.