The same therapy does not achieve equally good effects in all patients. This is due to the fact that every person has very personal characteristics or their very own genetic makeup. This means that the same disease can have different causes in different people or that drugs are processed by the body in different ways. Identifying the different causes of illness and adapting treatment accordingly is the approach of personalized or individualized medicine.

Tailor-made cancer therapy is based on new diagnostic methods such as the molecular-genetic examination of tumor tissue or blood. We are looking for special changes that characterize the tumor cell and that are also the cause of tumor growth. These are called biomarkers. Once this has been found, the tumor cell can be attacked precisely at this changed point. One then speaks of targeted therapy. Biomarkers therefore allow a prediction of whether a certain treatment method is effective and can therefore be used.