[Perspectives on postgenome medicine: Cancer].

Carcinogenesis is a multistep process which is the outcome of the accumulation of genetic and epigenetic events. However, characteristics of cancers, such as drug sensitivity, abilities in invasion and metastasis, are different in each patients, and reliable prediction of those characteristics is not available. DNA microarray and SNP have become the most widely used functional genomics tools. Microarray technology has provided the ability to analyse the expression profiles for thousands of genes, and a wealth of new information that should aid in cancer diagnosis and ultimately in therapy. The SNP project also will generate very variable resources for cancer therapy. The medicine in the next century will be so called 'personalized medicine' based on the new information of patients and diseases.