Future of medicine: Our DNA can lead to personalized medicine. (Non-Scientific)

By Edgardo Lopez

Can you imagine that in the future all of us get a diagnosis of a certain disease and be prepare for a better treatment? In our DNA we store all the information about ourselves, like the color of your eyes, baldness or even the possibility of having the same disease as one of the members of your family (don’t be scare is just a example). Knowing the complexity of our DNA we can understand many aspects related to medical issues in human health and now with the new technologies that are in constant change we can approach a better understanding of our biological information. Personalized medicine is not more just for diagnostic, now we can prevent medical problems and attack them in a more personalize treatment.

The most common example of a possible target for a better treatment is cancer. Cancer can be obtain throw our life course thanks to possible mutations acquired over time, interaction with the environment and even variation in the information that our DNA stores. One important key of knowing what cause cancer are called oncogenes. The oncogenes are DNA information in form of genes that promotes cell growing, tumor development and control of our cells. Advances in studies related to breast cancer incorporate the molecular approach to their clinical areas, were genes are analyze in each patient, to understand how their cells behave.

To achieve a better-personalized medicine we need to develop new ways to analyze the complexity of the data obtain from the disease and the DNA level. A possible way to analyze how a disease behave is by knowing the patterns of genes or protein expression to see how cells or tissue end up in certain characteristics. Understanding the complexity of DNA information will help us to comprehend a medical problem in a different aspect that the traditional medicine cannot do. Other areas of study that can achieve a better understanding other than cancer could be in cardiovascular medicine, neuroscience, metabolism and much more. The main goal of personalize medicine is to develop novel diagnostics, therapeutic approach and personalize drug development. One of the issues related to personalize medicine is focus in the analytical methods and the efficiency of DNA technologies.  For a better diagnosis, the complexity is a fundamental key to predict how our DNA expresses different things comparing normal cells with cancer cells (example). A profiling (analysis) of DNA expression and protein expression can be a good way to compare. Developing profiles of each individual can predict future event knowing their DNA constitution and expression. Personalize medicine is the next generation of clinical approach for a better performance in health care by using multiple source of DNA data. This next step in health will develop more precise descriptions of diseases, therapy decisions, and even formulation of drugs.

Here is a great talk video of how Personalize Medicine is changing with the advance in new technologies and how this will benefit us as patients.  

Reference:
Mike West et. al. Embracing the complexity of genomic data for personalized medicine.

16:559–566 2006. ISSN 1088-9051/06 <http://www.genome.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gr.3851306. >