Personalized medicine is designed for the specific genetic, epigenetics and
environmental properties of the individual and their diseased cells. Eventually, new
technologies will enable people to take a drop of blood from their fingertips, analyze it
at home and send it to a central computer. The data will be analyzed and compared to
the individual’s genome and epigenome. It may also be able to predict whether a patient
will respond well to a medicine. People with different genotypes and phenotypes can
metabolize drugs differently. The HIV viral genome is always changing, and resistance
testing can help doctors choose the drug that will best match the virus and suppress it.
The development of new biomarkers through advanced genomic, proteomic,
metabolomic and imaging technologies has a very high priority because they can
improve diagnosis, and define disease subsets. Clinical trials are being modernized by
automating the trials and managing the data. Instead of just making the medicine
specific for the DNA that a person is born with, it can also be made specific for a type
of cancer. This is being done by developing monoclonal antibodies, which will bind to
receptors that are specific for a particular type of cancer. Some of them are even parts of
FDA-approved medications. Most can’t kill cells by themselves, but they can still bind
to cancer-specific antigens and deliver drugs that are covalently attached to the
monoclonal antibody. Thus, there is much research required to bind drugs to
monoclonal antibodies, so that the drug only reaches the target organ.
Keywords: Personalized medicine, HerceptinTM, RituxanTM, CampathTM,
ErbituxTM, VectibixTM and AvastinTM.
