Future Trends: Personalized Medicines

26 Nov 2014

Our future trends series expands on the use of next-generation gene sequencing and delves into the world of personalized medicines. Imagine a future where our medicines have been prepared specifically for our genetic make-up, making them more effective, targeted and predictable and providing us with a greater chance of recovery and survival.

If you missed our previous blog on Next Generation Genes Sequencing, you can catch up and read it here.

Symptoms and Triggers ?

I remember going to the doctors with a symptom – rather than having the trigger looked at, I was provided with a general course of antibiotics. It didn’t work, I went back and was given something else to try. I am sure that we can all relate to this scenario. Now bring in the trend of the future: personalized medicines. Gone will be the days of trial and error to see if a particular course of medicine works, the choice of treatment looks set to be much more accurate.

The concept is quite simple, you can take the genome of a person and essentially create a medicine which will target the problem specifically. Think of it in a different way. Two people have the same symptoms, but the cause may be slightly different, so they will need slightly different medicines to help make them better. This is the basis of pharmacogenetics.

The future of personalized medicines? [Courtesy of Rob Rogers, Pittsburgh Post Gazette http://bit.ly/1qVn3qS]

A new framework for medical care

It is true when they say that prevention is better than cure. Not only can personalized medicines help with providing a unique and tailored solution to a complaint, they can be used to predict a patient’s likelihood of developing certain illnesses, allowing preventative measures to be put into action before symptoms even develop. Apart from increasing the rates of survival, this will bring much needed financial relief to health services across the world by targeting disease and genetic disorders before needing to spend money on resolving the issues they pose. We are hopeful that developing techniques for mapping the human genome will pave the way for the pharmaceutical development of more precise drug advancement and administration.

The foundation of personalized medicines is, of course, mapping the human genome efficiently, cheaply and correctly. From this there are likely to be a number of beneficiaries of this advanced technology: the patient, society in general and the pharmaceutical industry.

Will water play a role?

We are sure that it will. The field of diagnostics is ever growing and as such having a constant pure-water supply is essential. Clinical analyzers need to receive a constant and reliable supply of compliant water to produce and reproduce diagnostic tests accurately. Water quality below accepted standards affects result accuracy and significantly impacts running costs.

In the last part of this Future Trends series, we will be looking at taking the process of personalized medicines one step further with diagnosis from the comforts of your own home and the concept of lab-on-a-chip.