Precision medicine

Precision medicine

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Precision medicine

(PM) is a medical model that proposes the customization of healthcare

—

with

medical decisions, practices, and/or products being tailored to the individual patient. In this model,

diagnostic testing is often employed for selecting appropriate and optimal therapies based on the

context of a patient’s genetic content or other molecular or cellular analysis. Tools employed in PM

can include molecular diagnostics, imaging, and analytics/software.

[1]

Contents

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1 Relationship to personalized medicine

2 Scientific bases

3 Practice

4 See also

5 References

Relationship to personalized medicine

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In explaining the distinction from a similar common term of

personalized medicine

, the National

Research Council explains:

Precision Medicine refers to the tailoring of medical treatment to the individual characteristics of

each patient. It does not literally mean the creation of drugs or medical devices that are unique to a

patient, but rather the ability to classify individuals into subpopulations that differ in their susceptibility

to a particular disease, in the biology and/or prognosis of those diseases they may develop, or in

their response to a specific treatment. Preventive or therapeutic interventions can then be

concentrated on those who will benefit, sparing expense and side effects for those who will not.

Although the term ‘Personalized Medicine’ is also used to

convey this meaning, that term is

sometimes misinterpreted as implying that unique treatments can be designed for each individual.

[1]

On the other hand, use of the term

selection to also cover creating unique medical products for particular individuals

—

for example,

[2]

Hence, the term in

practice has so much overlap with

interchangeably.

[3]

Scientific bases

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Often, though not necessarily, PM involves the application of

panomic analysis

and

systems

biology

to analyze the cause of an individual patient's disease at the molecular level and then to

utilize

targeted treatments

(possibly in combination) to address that individual patient's disease

process. The patient's response is then tracked as closely as possible, often using surrogate

measures such as tumor load (v. true outcomes, such as 5 year survival rate), and the treatment

finely adapted to the patient's response.

[4]

The branch of precision medicine that addresses cancer is

referred to as

[5]

Inter- personal difference of

molecular pathology

is diverse, so as inter- personal difference in

the

exposome

, which influence disease processes through the

interactome

within

the

tissue

microenvironment

, differentially from person to person. As the theoretical basis of

precision medicine, the

[6]

emerged to embrace the

ubiquitous

phenomenon

of

heterogeneity

of

disease

etiology

and

pathogenesis

. The unique disease