Advancing the promises of precision medicine for patients with gastrointestinal stromal tumor

Gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST) treatment is one of the best examples of how precision medicine can impact outcomes in patients with cancer. In 1998, Hirota and colleagues reported that GISTs carried gain-of-function mutations in the proto-oncogene, c-KIT (1). Although considered a rare malignancy, GIST is the most common mesenchymal neoplasm of the gastrointestinal tract (2-4).