Alexandra Poddebniak
October 22, 2014
Personalized Medicine
The personalized medicine revolution has allowed the use of information about an individuals genetic make-up to assess disease risk, improve prognostic and diagnostic accuracy, and develop individualized drug, cell and gene therapies. However, personalized medicine can have different meanings to different people. Specifically, when we do not understand something we can begin to fear it, undervalue it or simply ignore it. As a society, we tend to believe that our medicine is already personalized in the sense that we have all have our own doctors and we all receive care for our own personal health problems. The issue with that school of thought is we are confusing ‘personalized medicine’ with ‘personalized care’. With conventional medicine, the treatment in which a doctor chooses fits …show more content…
The difference with personalized medicine is the integration of pharmacogenomics. Pharmocogenomics allows a doctor to administrate medicines that are tailored to a persons specific genetic makeup by using biomarkers such a s DNA sequences, the levels of certain enzymes or the presence or absence of drug receptors to estimate the likelihood that the drug therapy will be effective or elicit dangerous side effects. A 2011 study from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center illustrated the potential benefits from matching therapies with specific gene mutations across many cancer types. What they found was that patients who received a target therapy had 27% response rate compared to 5% for those whose therapy was not matched. This specific type of approach will reduce the number of patients who are unnecessarily
October 22, 2014
Personalized Medicine
The personalized medicine revolution has allowed the use of information about an individuals genetic make-up to assess disease risk, improve prognostic and diagnostic accuracy, and develop individualized drug, cell and gene therapies. However, personalized medicine can have different meanings to different people. Specifically, when we do not understand something we can begin to fear it, undervalue it or simply ignore it. As a society, we tend to believe that our medicine is already personalized in the sense that we have all have our own doctors and we all receive care for our own personal health problems. The issue with that school of thought is we are confusing ‘personalized medicine’ with ‘personalized care’. With conventional medicine, the treatment in which a doctor chooses fits …show more content…
The difference with personalized medicine is the integration of pharmacogenomics. Pharmocogenomics allows a doctor to administrate medicines that are tailored to a persons specific genetic makeup by using biomarkers such a s DNA sequences, the levels of certain enzymes or the presence or absence of drug receptors to estimate the likelihood that the drug therapy will be effective or elicit dangerous side effects. A 2011 study from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center illustrated the potential benefits from matching therapies with specific gene mutations across many cancer types. What they found was that patients who received a target therapy had 27% response rate compared to 5% for those whose therapy was not matched. This specific type of approach will reduce the number of patients who are unnecessarily