In the forty years since the so called War on Cancer had been launched, very little progress had been made against this very devastating and deadly disease. Most of us have loved ones who had been lost to cancer. However, according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, very recent advances in the cancer genomics have had substantially positive effect on one of the deadliest cancers of them all: the lung cancer. The survival rates for this kind of cancer (actually a collection of several different cancers) have increased dramatically since 2010.

It is not clear how this line of treatment will translate to other kinds of cancer. Many of them have already reaped benefits from other treatment strategies. The survival rate for lung cancer was also so low that any real breakthrough would have likely had important effect. However, this is really great news for so many reasons that go well beyond cancer research. It seems that the age of individually-tailored medicine is finally arriving. As fewer and fewer disease-specific proteins seem to be drugable, researchers and medical professionals are increasingly looking into the next phase in medicine. After many years of overhyping such alternatives, we may finally be on the verge of real and substantial breakthroughs. And that’s something worth celebrating, or, at the very least, being really hopeful about.