Personalized Medicine – a Window to a Better Medical Future

The medical world has been a domain that has always strived to reach perfection but never managed to. Over the past centuries, medical experts have struggled to research and discover ways in which they could improve the medical approach of different diseases. All this time, the numerous studies have been based on studies of big cohorts, the purpose of which was to determine which medical models were best and which were better off forgotten. Recently, the medical experts believe that they have struck gold when it comes to diagnosing and treating diseases. For some time now, they have toggled with the idea of personalized medicine which is a medical model that concerns with the high customization of the healthcare process.

In a famous medical magazine called Vanderbilt Medicine, Bill Snyder has conducted a prolonged research on the subject of personalized medicine and how it will affect the medical approach of the future. According to Snyder, the entire concept of personalized medicine was thought to be unreal, mainly because the fact that every patient could have a customized medical treatment was very improbable. Furthermore, Snyder has interviewed Dan Roden, the assistant vice chancellor for the entire project of personalized medicine. In the expert’s opinion, personalized medicine is no longer an unreachable matter, but rather something of mundane importance. (Snyder)

The article also includes details on the method that personalized medicine is based on. Genetic engineering is the main technique used to create the perfect customized treatment. However, this is not everything there is to it. According to Jeff Balser, the vice chancellor for Health Affairs, “personalized medicine isn’t just DNA sequencing and knowing what drug to give people.” (Snyder) Balser thinks that it takes more than gene sequencing to prescribe the right drugs and dosages, but also the patient’s personal details. Nonetheless, the entire concept of personalized medicine is centered on the study of the patient’s genome in order to determine the affected genes and try to treat them with the appropriate dosage of the correct drug.

There are multiple medical areas where personalized medicine is proving itself to be of vital importance. Amongst these uses, the most important are definitely the study of the cancerous cells and the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular diseases. There are numerous types of tumors that have been studied with implications of personalized medicine, and one of them is prostate cancer. A team of medical experts have worked together to publish a report on the importance of personalized medicine in the surveillance of prostate cancer. According to authors Paolo Gandellini and coauthors Marco Folini and Nadia Zaffaroni, the genetic study upon the microRNAs in the tumor cells is relevant for the efficient treatment of the condition. As it turns out, managing to determine the mutations of the microRNAs and combining those with the results of the biomarkers test have considerably improved the manner in which prostate cancer is treated. (Gandellini)

As for the cardiovascular diseases, the study of the genetic variation is valorous because it has managed to prove the etiology of certain conditions such as aortic dissection, atherosclerosis and hypertension. Two specialists in the cardiovascular disease field have conducted a study regarding the development of personalized medicine in patients with diseases of the heart and arteries. According to them, the heritability is a very important risk factor and it can be determined using genetic techniques. Moreover, the studies have discovered that there are rare genetic mutations in most of the patients’ genomes, which led to a more precise diagnosis and treatment. (O’Donnell, Nabel)

All in all, the prospect of personalized medicine is extremely promising. This is because by studying the genome of the human at a microscopic level, specialists can discover effective manners in which they can diagnose and treat certain diseases. This is however a method in research, as its actual potential is yet to be discovered.