Personalized Medicine: Revolutionizing Treatment in the Era of Individualized Care

We have a massive amount of data about genes that cause cancer and environmental factors that may lead to cancer, such as sunlight exposure and smoking. But, still, there isn’t any cure for cancer on pharmacy shelves as well as many diseases still don’t have curative medicines for them like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

Let’s take cancer as an example of a complex disease, and let us start by explaining what cancer is. Cancer is a condition where cells regrow and divide uncontrollably. Organs in our bodies have a constant ability to generate new cells to compensate for the dying of cells. Therefore, your body can heal itself. As with any process in our body, the regrowth and division of cells are controlled by a regulation system that consists of different genes located inside the cell, which give instructions to the cell, such as when to divide and how often to divide. Normally, any abnormal cell will be shifted to a program of cell death to be killed. Unfortunately, in some situations, this regulation system is disrupted, and it becomes unable to give the correct direction as to when to divide and how often to divide. This will lead the cells to divide uncontrollably and create what is called a tumor.

AI Generated Art.

Since we are all unique, every person has their own genetic material and behavior patterns, which can be linked to the disease and make the disease unique for each individual. Therefore, we have to change the way we think about cancer. We have to understand that there is no one type of cancer for a group of patients, but each individual has their own type of cancer. So, it’s not sufficient to prescribe the same medicine to all breast cancer patients, for example. This is the idea of personalized medicine: to prescribe the right medicine to the right patient according to their individual profile.

Creating an individual genetic profile is a daunting task, given that the human genome comprises approximately 3 billion base pairs. This is akin to sifting through 3 billion letters to identify a single error in the sequence - a proverbial needle in a haystack! The first sequencing of the human genome was a monumental achievement that cost around a hundred million dollars. Today, however, advancements in technology have drastically reduced this cost to less than $2,000. Leveraging this modern technology, we can identify individuals at high risk of developing diseases like cancer and intervene at early stages to prevent disease progression. Furthermore, we can recognize individual genetic profiles and prescribe medication tailored to the patient's unique genetic makeup.

However, the implementation of personalized medicine presents its own set of challenges. It remains a costly endeavor, and access to such treatments varies greatly across different countries. Economic challenges are among the most significant obstacles facing personalized medicine. However, the long-term benefits of personalized medicine could potentially outweigh these initial costs. By prescribing the right medication to the right patient, we can increase drug efficacy, avoid wasteful spending on ineffective treatments, and ultimately enhance the quality of healthcare.

To summarize, personalized medicine is expected to change the way we look at treating and diagnosing diseases. It is also expected to give birth to a revolution in drug selection by giving doctors the ability to prescribe the right medicine to the right patient according to the various factors among patients - essentially dealing with each patient as a unique case. Furthermore, personalized medicine will improve the success rate of medicines by making medicines more efficient and decreasing the side effects.

Written by Marah Khalili, 3rd year PhD student in the NBI Lab

March 14, 2025