Oral Presentation Clinical Oncology Society of Australia Annual Scientific Meeting 2026

Exploring the biomarker era, mechanisms of drug resistance, and the evolving landscape of precision oncology (147443)

Herbert Loong 1
  1. The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, HONG KONG

Precision oncology has evolved from an aspiration into the framework underpinning contemporary cancer management, yet its enabling components remain unevenly distributed across tumour types. This lecture examines the requirements for delivering personalised care by contrasting two fields — lung cancer and sarcoma. Lung cancer represents precision oncology at its most mature: a broad, routinely interrogated biomarker landscape, increasingly complemented by dynamic, blood-based measures of disease burden. Despite this, durable responses remain uncommon, and acquired resistance — the progressive molecular evolution of tumours under effective therapy — has become the principal clinical challenge. Sarcoma presents the converse problem: a heterogeneous group of individually rare tumours in which accurate molecular diagnosis is itself the first and most difficult step, and in which targeted approaches succeed within defined subsets rather than broadly. Within this context, the lecture considers how an expanding therapeutic landscape is redefining which patients can be regarded as "targetable". Personalised care is characterised not as a single molecular test but as an iterative cycle of profiling, treatment matching, monitoring and adaptation, in which the rate-limiting component differs by disease. The presentation concludes by addressing the non-molecular determinants of personalised care: expert interpretation, multidisciplinary management, and equitable access to testing and therapy.