Introduction
Big strides are being made in the medical field, and it’s getting personal! Treatments used to have a “one size fits all” approach, where individuals affected by a specific condition would receive the same treatment regardless of unique factors in each patient. In this common scenario, some patients would do well with the accepted treatment, while others would not see any improvement in their condition. An approach called personalized medicine (PM) aims to determine a patient’s specific disease pattern using the patient’s history. It has a major impact on medical device and drug choices for all individuals in the same patient population for a disease (Singh et al., 2024). It allows them to receive an appropriate therapy that is ideal for their diagnosed condition. This will lead to an increased success in pharmaceutical care, as patients will receive care tailored to their unique condition, and innovative discoveries will lead to more accurate medications for given diseases. The three conditions highlighted in this article are diabetes, asthma, and cancer.
Personalized Medicine’s Role in Diabetes Treatment
Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) is considered to be a serious multifactorial autoimmune disorder (Akil et al., 2021). Cases of T1D are increasing, and various factors contribute to allowing for the autoimmune reaction to destroy pancreatic beta cells, including environmental and genetic factors. Patients with T1D are all at different stages and severities of the disease. The motivation behind personalized medicine is partly due to the rising costs of treatment for those with T1D (Akil et al., 2021).
Since T1D patients present at different severities and timelines, they are diagnosed on a spectrum of stages. Historically, diagnosis was solely based on the discovery of blood glucose that is out of range. This unfortunately allows for the treatment to work for some individuals in the patient population, but not for others. In the present day, T1D is commonly treated using manual testing of blood sugar levels and administering the appropriate amount of prescribed insulin. Moving forward, the goal is to use continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) and continuous insulin infusion to create an artificial pancreas. This allows the patient to go about their day without having to manually manage insulin dosages. The hope is to personalize this method by adjusting parameters specific to the patient (Akil et al., 2021). Personalized medicine will open up a freer life for those diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes.
Breathe Easy: Personalized Medicine in Severe Asthma
Severe asthma is a complex condition that presents with chronic inflammation of the airways, and accepted treatments are primarily focused on symptom control, rather than prevention (Chen et al., 2023). Treatments are shifting more towards personalization for each patient type, as asthma is now known to be a multifactorial disease impacted by various factors. Providers can use the identified inflammatory mechanisms to choose the most appropriate treatment (Chen et al., 2023). Some patients with asthma still don’t respond to treatment, and personalized medicine can lead to amazing breakthroughs for this patient population.
Huge Impact on Cancer Treatment
Personalized therapy has been a huge focus in oncology and cancer research due to the ever-changing nature of cancer. Since every patient’s cancer is different, PM allows for strategies of treatment tailored to the patient’s needs and safety. It takes the patient’s genetic factors, biochemical factors, and lifestyle factors into consideration when deciding the treatment course (Singh et al., 2024). The same factors that contribute to cancer development can be used to create a drug that attacks that specific factor. An article written by Braig et. al. discusses the drug Imatinib, a drug used to treat chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML). While Imatinib shows great efficacy along with low toxicity, some other targeted therapy agents have not produced the same good results (Braig, 2022).
Conclusion
Personalized medicine will change the way providers treat patients who have been diagnosed with various diseases. The ability to determine potential illnesses, initiate preventive measures, test for a specific diagnosis, and determine the best treatment will improve patient outcomes (Singh et al., 2024). In cancer care, traditional biomarkers are often used along with some targeted therapies for personalized medicine.
References
Akil, A. A., Yassin, E., Al-Maraghi, A., Aliyev, E., Al-Malki, K., & Fakhro, K. A. (2021). Diagnosis and treatment of type 1 diabetes at the dawn of the personalized medicine era. J Transl Med, 19(1), 137. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12967-021-02778-6
Braig, Z. V. (2022). Personalized medicine: From diagnostic to adaptive. Biomed J, 45(1), 132-142. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bj.2019.05.004
Chen, C. Y., Wu, K. H., Guo, B. C., Lin, W. Y., Chang, Y. J., Wei, C. W., Lin, M. J., & Wu, H. P. (2023). Personalized Medicine in Severe Asthma: From Biomarkers to Biologics. Int J Mol Sci, 25(1). https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms25010182
Singh, D., Dhiman, V. K., Pandey, M., Dhiman, V. K., Sharma, A., Pandey, H., Verma, S. K., & Pandey, R. (2024). Personalized medicine: An alternative for cancer treatment. Cancer Treat Res Commun, 42, 100860. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ctarc.2024.100860