Problems, challenges and promises: perspectives on precision medicine

Abstract

Conflicts of interest:The author discloses no potential conflicts of interest. Summary key points•Introduction of precision medicine/systems medicine concepts and approaches• Review of some of the challenges to the clinical implementation of precision medicine• Outline of methodologies being employed to overcome these challenges• Examination of the claims that precision medicine has overpromised Author biographyDavid J. Duffy is primarily an experimentalist, based at Systems Biology Ireland in University College Dublin. His research interests include cancer biology and evolutionary developmental biology and the application of omic technologies and systems medicine approaches to address questions in these fields. AbstractThe precision medicine (systems medicine) concept promises to achieve a shift to future

Sea turtle fibropapilloma tumors share genomic drivers and therapeutic vulnerabilities with human cancers

“…The genomic profiling reported here has improved our molecular understanding of fibropapillomatosis by revealing the host signaling pathways involved in tumors and indicating novel rehabilitation strategies for fibropapillomatosis-afflicted sea turtles. Additionally, this study demonstrates the power of precision medicine approaches 47,48 to tackle rare or understudied diseases for which there is limited background genetic knowledge, and provides a proof-of-principle study for the emerging field of precision wildlife medicine 4 .…”

“…In order to determine the molecular signaling events responsible for driving fibropapilloma tumor growth in green sea turtles ( C. mydas ), we employed precision medicine approaches 47–49 , previously honed in the field of human oncology. This included next-generation Illumina RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) transcriptomic profiling and computationally-based systems-level analysis.…”

Make Precision Medicine Work for Chronic Kidney Disease

“…Then, the patient's response should be monitored, and clinical trials should be conducted to adjust the predictive models and personalized treatments ( Fig. 1 ) [29] . RNA microarrays have been used to analyze gene expression profiles in renal glomerular and tubular samples from diabetic kidney disease (DKD) patients.…”

Big Data for Biomedical Research and Personalised Medicine: an Epistemological and Ethical Cross-Analysis

“…Digital epidemiology constitutes a particularly striking application (Salathé et al, 2012), as exemplified by the famous though mitigated Google Flu Trend experience aiming at the prediction of flu activity through web search patterns (Lazer et al, 2014). Moreover, big data processing of patient-specific information (from electronic health records, aggregated clinical trials, biomolecular sequencing data,…) permits the design of clinical decision support systems and opens the road for personalised or precision medicine (Duffy, 2016).…”