CISN - What is the Promise of Personalized Medicine?

Personalized Medicine & You

What is the Promise of Personalized Medicine?

The promise of personalized medicine is that cancer treatment for each person will be as individualized as the person himself or herself.

Personalized medicine takes into consideration that all human diseases have both molecular and environmental components. The study of genetic variation has proven to be more complex than imagined. Proteomics and Metabolomics are still in the early stages of study and are not yet used routinely in the clinic, but the potential is great.

Personalized medicine has the potential to:

Reduce traditional “trial-and-error” therapy
Reduce adverse drug interactions
Improve the selection of drug targets
Reduce time, cost, and failure rates of clinical trials
Revive drugs that failed clinical trials with heterogeneous patient populations and retest in specific subgroups
Identify reliable tumor markers that detect disease early
Shift the emphasis in medicine from reaction to prevention
Reduce the overall cost of healthcare

Personalized medicine is about “you.” It includes all of your traditional clinical medical information, combined with your “omic” information, and is influenced by your interaction with your environment.

As the uniqueness of individual tumors become clear, it is now understood that even the right combinations of drugs will fall short as resistance develops and responses are not durable. Studies have found up to a 40% difference between primary and recurrent lesions. Science must be able to distinguish mutations that are drivers of disease and therefore targetable, from those that are merely present. Personalized medicine is working on this now.3

Personalized medicine pays attention to your needs and customizes care in response to what you say; everything from your reports of specific symptoms to descriptions of personal goals and quality of life.

The ultimate in personalized medicine care integrates your personal story with the best science.

“Content Developed September 1, 2012”