future of medicine

1. Personalized
Medicine

2. Personalized Medicine (PM) …
… is …
… about making the
treatment as
individualized as
the disease.
… the ability to predict
an individual's susceptibility
to diseases.
… a young but
rapidly advancing
field.
… the use of new
methods of molecular
analysis.

3. As we know…
… people vary from one another in many ways:
types and amount of
stress they experience
exposure to
environmental
factors
their DNA
what they eat The person
Many of these variations play a role in health and disease

4. … so …
… because these factors are different for
every person,
the nature of diseases is
as individual as the people who have them.

5. PM involves identifying:
genetic info genomic info clinical info
allows
predictions to be made about
a person's susceptibility of :
developing disease course of disease
its response to treatment

6. But PM is not "genetic medicine"!
 Genetics, a field more than 50 years old,
is the study of heredity. It examines
individual genes and their effects as they
relate to biology and medicine.
 In PM we study DNA polymorphisms

7. DNA polymorphisms
 It is the natural variations in our genes that
plays a role in our risk of getting or not
getting certain diseases.
 The combination of these variations across
several genes affects each individual’s risk.

8. Natural genetic variations also are part
of the reason …
 … the same drug works well in one
individual and not another.
 DNA polymorphism leads to differences in:
how drugs are by the body
absorbed
used
metabolized

9. Genes (I)
 Give a rise to proteins that play key roles in
biological processes
 In rare instances, one single mutated or
malfunctioning gene leads to a distinct
genetic disease or syndrome. Such
disorders are termed “monogenic”.
 The most familiar of these rare disorders include
sickle cell anemia and cystic fibrosis.

10. Genes (II)
 Also multiple genes can influence the
development of many common and
complex diseases, as well as a response to
the pharmaceuticals designed to treat
them.
 The contribution of several genes to these
complex disorders is termed “polygenic.”

11. As a result of this complexity…
 … one disease can be reclassified as
several different diseases, each of which
might respond to a different treatment.
 Such disease complexity exists for asthma
and many forms of cancer.

12. How scientists can do it?

13. Molecular analysis of “biomarkers”
 Biomarkers - are biological molecules that
are associated with a particular disease
state. It’s analysis can help classify:
 sub-types within a disease
 sub-groups of patients who have the same
molecular variation of the disease

14. Specific advantages that PM may offer
patients and clinicians include (I):
 Ability to make more informed medical
decisions
 Higher probability of desired outcomes
thanks to better-targeted therapies
 Reduced probability of negative side effects

15. Specific advantages that PM may offer
patients and clinicians include (II):
 Focus on prevention and prediction of
disease rather than reaction to it
 Earlier disease intervention than has been
possible in the past
 Reduced healthcare costs

16. PM is already having an impact on
patient treatments:
 Molecular testing is being used to identify
breast cancer and colon cancer patients
likely to benefit from new treatments
 Newly diagnosed patients with early stage
invasive breast cancer can now be tested
for the likelihood of recurrence.

17. Using natural genetic variations PM
aims …
 … to tackle more complex diseases, such
as cancer, heart disease, and diabetes …
 Believed to be influenced primarily by
environmental factors and their interaction with the
human genome.
 … and to develop new safe and effective
treatments for genetically defined sub-
groups of patients.

18. Diagram

19. The End