Making Personalized Medicine a Reality

Personalized medicine is the future of medicine. Doctors have treated people the same way for their diseases for generations, despite pronounced differences between cases. It’s only recently that medicine has noted differences between men and women in health matters, much fewer individuals.

Now that we know everyone responds differently to medication and even to diagnosis, we can study how they should be treated. Personalized medicine is designed to work with you based on how your particular body reacts and handles various substances, diseases, and more.

Going from the one-size-fits-all method of treating disease to treating the individual may seem radical, but it makes sense. Every single person is slightly different. Genomics is rapidly opening people’s eyes to how the world works and indicates more specialized treatments for everyone.

Personalized medicine could have a significant impact on healthcare overall, but what exactly can we expect to see? What are areas of personalized medicine already in play?

Education and Finance Play a Role in Personalized Medicine

Many of the technologies necessary to implement personalized medicine exist but are not readily available to the public. For example, liquid biopsy is a beneficial, minimally invasive method of detecting tumors. The test uses biomarkers found in bodily fluids and can determine if cancer is present in the body. Some clinical trials have indicated that it may be possible to diagnose the type of cancer-based on the biomarkers that show up. This would speed up treatment and make it much simpler to catch and treat cancer early enough for a good prognosis.

Unfortunately, many newer procedures are quite expensive, some even prohibitively so. They are out of reach for many people simply due to cost. However, this isn’t the only thing holding doctors back from using more personalized medicine techniques.

Education is also a huge factor. With so many doctors using the same methods and techniques taught in school, switching to new methods may not be the easiest. New tech can meet with resistance, and even when accepted, doctors need education on its use and methods. This takes time and more resources, something that the world is rather short on at this point.

While these issues may slow the implementation of personalized or precision medicine, they certainly won’t stop it. Live science business networks are working to help increase supply chain visibility and make it more affordable for everyone to receive their precision medicine. The idea behind these networks is to help create more transparency in the system and absorb some risks so that the cost drops considerably. This method could end up helping people have better access to medicine and medical care that would be tailored to their individual needs.

Within pharmaceutical pipelines, there is also a particular footprint. Nearly all companies produce one main type of each medication. However, with personalized medicine, there would need to be more variations or stratified medicine. The fact that this doesn’t exist means it will be challenging for physicians to order the medicine as it is needed. This could go in two directions.

A few companies focus on providing personalized medicine so that they will be the outliers in the beginning. They will probably become the most popular choice for most people who will use this innovative treatment trend. The other companies will eventually follow.

Alternatively, there will be industry standards set that everyone can follow, and all companies will begin providing a range of medications. At the moment, there are no clear guidelines or regulatory paths that would help pharmaceutical providers create the medicine that is needed. This needs to be remedied before we can see an improvement in treatments.

Drug development is a vital part of the business and of treating patients. It must be adjusted if it is all going to work together.

Recent Advances in Personalized Medicine

Where has personalized medicine been going in the past few years? The industry is constantly building and researching while learning new things. Therefore, it’s not surprising that several new technologies and advances have been made. This is evidence that personalized medicine is becoming a reality right now.

These advances include:

Clinicians are exploring the ability to conduct noninvasive immunological tests on potential transplant patients. Rather than cause more pain and suffering in already ill patients, doctors monitor allograft function and use liquid biopsies to determine potential immunologic issues in each patient. Their immunosuppression and rejection treatment medications can then be personalized to their particular body and needs. While the medical method is currently being trialed in transplant patients, it holds huge potential for other groups of patients, including those with compromised immune systems due to disease or chemotherapy.

Scientists have discovered that circular RNAs or CircRNAs are useful in cases of kidney disease, kidney-related cardiovascular issues, hypertensive nephropathy, and several other issues dealing with the kidneys. They are also found to regulate drug resistance in kidney cancer.

Potential biomarkers for depression have been discovered thanks to genome-wide DNA methylation from monozygotic (identical) twins. This could mean depression is determined from a very young age due to DNA markers and then treated before it begins to cause problems. The potential for saving and changing lives is impressive.

There are many areas where personalized medicine is rapidly advancing. It may not be mainstream practice just yet, but it is certainly getting to that point. In the coming years, we can expect to see this new way of treating patients come into its own as more and more tests are carried out on people with varying conditions and biomarkers.