Molecular Tumor Boards: What they are; What they do; What they need

Опубликовано 22 июня 2016, 2:15

For some time my colleagues and I have been studying cancer tumor boards, now rapidly becoming molecularized by the molbio/omics/big-data revolutions. A Molecular Tumor Board (MTB) is essentially an engineering team charged with giving real-time guidance to a human being facing a life-threatening disease. However, unlike "real" engineering teams, who have numerous tools and strong theories to guide them in their designs, MTBs are pretty much stuck with search engines, which are rather weak reasoning aides. What tools would an MTB need? Honestly, I have no idea. What I can tell you, though, is what they do, and from that we may be able to co-construct, along with them, what they might need.