The Future is Personalized Medicine Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

The Future is Personalized Medicine - Essay ExamplePharmacogenomics and pharmacogenetics, which be expected to be at the core of PM, combine to offer several advantages over conventional clinical methods. For example, while pharmacogenomics is limited to identifyng inheritable response to medication across the whole genome, pharmacogenetics studies the effects of medication at the level of respective(prenominal) genes (the chart below outlines how it operates). The former also tries to reveal important links between genomic patterns and clinical responses. much(prenominal) links are crucial sources of medical knowledge, as they empower clinicians to choose a particular intercession option based on individual patient condition as opposed to adopting a conventional trial-and-error approach. (Hood, 2003, p.582) The Human Genome Project (HGP), initiated and supported by former American President Bill Clinton was opposite to subsequent breakthroughs in Personalized Medicine. With th e help of advanced computing power, already more than 3 one million million base pairs of DNA have been successfully mapped. With the completion of the HGP in 2003, new possibilities for PM have been open up. Working expeditiously to make Personalized Medicine a reality in the near incoming are such organizations as the International HapMap Project, the NIH Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE), the Roadmap Epigenomics Program, etc. (Cox, et. al., 2007, p.112) In order to visualize the scope and effectiveness of Personalized Medicine, let us take a hypothetical persona. For instance, in the case of oncology treatment, where presently oral-intake medicines can cost hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars per year for the afflicted patient, deduceing the intricate genetic pathways (which is odd to all(prenominal) individual) is important in order to determine the probable efficacy of a particular therapy course. It is a indicate of progress that in the United States today in that location are 6 drugs for which FDA requires diagnostic genetic scrutiny before prescription, about 30 for which a diagnostic test is recommended, and another 200 with pharmacogenomic information on the labels. (Hesselgrave, 2010, p.16) Moreover, traditional healthcare provision adopts an one-size-fits-all approach. Whereas, under Personalized Medicine, this practice will be dismantled and unique prognostic courses would be designed based on the patients genetic make up. Powerful technologies that try to understand the working of the human body down to the cellular level will be part of proximo PM treatments. These technologies include genomics, proteomics (the study of proteins), and metabolomics (the study of metabolites) amongst others. Metabolomics is of special interest to physicians as it has the potential to provide separate information about individual patients. While the offer of proteomics research is to identify abnormal protein patterns in patients, the purpose o f metabolomic research is to identify abnormal metabolite patterns. Scientists are of the view that human bodies contain more than 3,000 metabolites that play a crucial role in proper growth and development of various organs. Apart from these primary metabolites there are secondary metabolites which strenghthen the immune system and helps reduce mental and physical stress. Of particular interest to the medical community are low-molecular-weight metabolites