<![CDATA[There is evidence demonstrating that cancer etiology is multi-factorial and modification of risk factors has achieved cancer prevention. There is therefore a need to advance the understanding of cancer etiology through interaction effects between risk factors when estimating the contribution of an individual to the cancer burden in a population. It has been known that cancer may arise from genetic susceptibility to the disease as an intrinsic factor; however, non-intrinsic factors drive most cancer risk as well and highlight the need for cancer prevention. Are our clinical pathologists aware of these facts?. Are they ready to understand and to provide an excellent test with good expertise?. Hereditary cancer testing is typically performed using gene panels, which may be either cancer-specific or pan-cancer to assess risk for a defined or broader range of cancers, respectively. Given the clinical implications of hereditary cancer testing, diagnostic laboratories must develop high-quality panel tests, which serve a broad, genetically diverse patient population. The result will determine a patient's eligibility for targeted therapy, for instance, or lead a patient to prophylactic surgery, chemoprevention, and surveillance. This review will introduce the definitions of intrinsic and non-intrinsic risk factors, which have been employed in recent work and how evidence for their effects on the cancer burden in human subjects has been obtained. Genetic testing of cancer susceptibility genes by use of liquid biopsies and New Generation Sequencing (NGS) is now widely applied in clinical practice to predict the risk of developing cancer, help diagnosis, and treatment monitoring.]]>
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