Imagine the possibilities when precision medicine — a way to predict, diagnose and treat disease based on information derived from genetic and genomic data — is applied to clinical trials.

Experts explore these possibilities in the latest episode of Mayo Clinic's new podcast, "The Pursuit of Precision: The Science Advancing Individualized Medicine."

April 19, Episode 5: 'Clinical Trial Design' 

Cathy Wurzer, a broadcast journalist from Minnesota Public Radio, dives into how some of the changes in clinical trials can be applied to the stages of the cancer continuum, including cancer prevention, early detection and treatment. Listen to two noted experts discuss how individualized medicine has changed the clinical trials field. Find out more about the next generation of clinical trials researchers use, such as basket and umbrella studies, to decrease the cost and length of trials and advance individualized medicine. 

Guests are: 

• Jewel Samadder, M.D., a Mayo Clinic consultant in gastroenterology, hepatology and clinical genomics and interim associate director of Mayo Clinic's Center for Individualized Medicine in Arizona 

"It is seeing the fruition of genomics coming into everyday cancer care and especially this newfound approach of multicancer early detection. Can we use something as simple as a blood sample to screen you for 10 or 20 cancers and how will that era develop?" - Dr. Samadder

• Razelle Kurzrock, M.D., Chair of precision oncology and associate director of Medical College of Wisconsin Cancer Center 

"What the genomics was telling us was that we needed to individualize our therapy to patients and furthermore that for patients with advanced disease one drug wasn't going to be enough but that's not the way we did clinical trials, that's not the way we did clinical practice, so now it became not just about the science but how to reconstruct everything we were doing." - Dr. Kurzrock 

Look for this upcoming episode 

May 3: 'Individualized Cancer Vaccines' 

Tags: center for individualized medicine, clinical trials, individualized medicine, mayo clinic, Precision Medicine