Although the survival rates for many types of cancer have improved significantly in recent years, cancer was still responsible for 8.8 million deaths worldwide in 2015, or nearly one in six of all deaths, making it the second biggest cause of death globally after coronary heart disease.
In the past few years, scientific advances such as tumor genome sequencing have helped to identify the genetic basis of many types of cancer. Indeed, genomic sequencing of biopsy material from human tumors has become an essential part of cancer diagnosis and treatment