Precision Medicine Versus Population Medicine in Colon Cancer: From Prospects of Prevention, Adjuvant Chemotherapy, and Surveillance

With the advances of technologic revolution that provides new insights into human biology, genetics and cancer, as well as advantages of big data which amasses large amounts of information for us to approach cancer treatment and prevention, we are facing challenges of organically combining data from studies based on general population and information from individual testing and setting out precisional recommendations in cancer diagnosis, prevention, and treatment. We are obligated to accelerate the adaptation of new scientific discoveries into effective treatments and prevention for cancer. In this review, we introduce our opinions on bringing knowledge of precision and population medicine together to guide our clinical practice from the prospects of colorectal cancer prevention, stage III colon cancer adjuvant therapy, and postsurgery surveillance.