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What is precision medicine?
With the use of targeted therapy, medical professionals may offer and plan customized treatment for their patients depending on the unique genetics, proteins, and other components of each patient’s body. This method is often referred to as tailored care or targeted therapies.
Precision medicine in the context of cancer typically entails examining how alterations in particular genes or proteins in a patient’s cancer cells may impact their treatment, like their therapy options. But it also has other applications.
Gene changes and precision medicine
Understanding the consequences of changes in specific genes (and proteins) inside cells is a key component of personalized medication.
DNA fragments found inside each cell make up genes. They direct the cell in producing the proteins required for its proper operation. Each gene holds the information (code) needed to produce a particular protein, and every protein performs a particular function in the cell.
The genes within a cell are duplicated during cell division to create new cells. A gene change—also referred to as a variation or mutation—occurs when a copying error. Since our parents are our DNA’s origin, these alterations might often be attributed to them. As hereditary gene alterations, these are. However, gene alterations can also occur afterward in life The term “acquired gene alterations” refers to this.
Precision medicine in cancer care
- For some tumors, precision medicine has been utilized to determine the optimal testing and treatments. To assist them, practitioners may use precision medicine:
- Determine those who may be at significant hazard for cancer and assist them in reducing that risk.
- Discover early signs of some malignancies
- Properly identify a particular form of cancer
- Pick the most effective cancer care alternatives
- Analyze the efficacy of a medication
Benefits
Individualized or precision medication is emerging as a potent strategy for avoiding and treating cancer and numerous other illnesses, especially with every new finding, medicinal achievement, and patient cure achieved through these processes. Pathology alone is proven to be considerably less effective than precise molecular analyses of patients’ tissues, cells, and cancers in directing our therapy.
Pharmacological advancements are merging with the capacity to follow the growth or shrinkage of malignancy over time using the ever-growing variety of biomarkers to target therapies for a specified community, racial background, or cancer type. One group subset that could gain from precision medicine is children with tumors, who would gain from early identification and better health care.
Clinical significance
New research with 5688 non-small cell pulmonary cancer patients is a good illustration of the benefits of precision medicine and the necessity for future development. A total of 15% of the cohort underwent extensive gene sequencing for about 30 genes, whereas the remaining patients had their EGFR and ALK variants tested, two conditions for which there are treatments.
The findings showed that the 12-month death rates for the 2 categories were not dissimilar, with the incidence for the two-gene group, which got therapies for their genetic variants, being at 44.4% and the rate for the bigger number being 41.1%. It should be highlighted that the difference might be anticipated to grow as more precisely targeted medications are created and subsequently compared with genetic variants.
Future recommendations
The achievements of human genetic research are being used to advance precision medication. The moment will come, probably very soon, when all those engaged in studying, assessing, and diagnosing illnesses will have the ability to offer individualized medicines thanks to this intersection of genes, molecular profiling, and medical information.
By avoiding dangerous, unsatisfactory, and unsuccessful studies, significant advancements in genetic and biomarker analysis as well as pharmacogenetics will result in the development of medicines and therapies that are more accurate and convenient at all stages.
