Nature Network - Recent topics from Personalized Medicine & Global Systems Biology

Politics & Personalized Medicine... (0 replies)

Erfan Younesi — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 21:36:28 -0000

Personalized medicine has the potential to revolutionize the practice of medicine, but despite significant scientific advances, very few genomics-based tests or treatments have reached consumers.
Senator Barack Obama introduced the Genomics and Personalized Medicine Act in 2006 to overcome the scientific barriers, adverse market pressures, and regulatory obstacles that have stood in the way of better medicine. In addition, in the United States, the Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt has made personalized medicine the top priority during his tenure. He has created a committee that is called the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Genetics Health and Society. During the March meeting there was briefing re-affirming his commitment to this wonderful new phase of medical care.

SNPs: A Key Component of Personalized Medicine (0 replies)

Erfan Younesi — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 23:03:47 -0000

If the concept of personalized medicine is to be realized, it is increasingly clear that single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), the most common genetic variations between human beings, will be a key enabler. A SNP is a single base-pair mutation that occurs at a specific site in the DNA sequence. To classify a variation as a SNP it should occur in at least 1% of the population.
Since it is SNPs that are responsible for over 80% of the variation between two individuals, they are ideal for the task of hunting for correlations between genotype and phenotype. As some SNPs predispose individuals to have a certain disease or trait or react to a drug in a different way, they will be highly useful in diagnostics and drug development.

The era of personalized medicine is just around the corner... (0 replies)

Erfan Younesi — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:09:37 -0000

“A convergence of technological breakthroughs has taken genomic biomarker discovery to a new level. Between advances in sequencing, evolving array designs, and a more sophisticated understanding of genome architecture, simple tests for glucose, cholesterol, and human chorionic gonadotropin could soon be competing for pharmacy shelf space with gene expression– and epigenome-based diagnostics that promise to detect diseases earlier, stratify patients into treatment classes, and identify those most likely to respond to therapies. First to benefit: cancer patients. The era of personalized medicine is just around the corner.”
To read more, refer to the source: “Genomic Biomarker Discovery: Bringing the Genome to Life” by Jeffrey M. Perkel in Science magazine, under the LIFE SCIENCE TECHNOLOGIES (28 March 2008); http://www.sciencemag.org/products/lst_20080328.dtl

Use of multiple markers and improvement of the prediction model for cardiovascular mortality (1 reply)

Erfan Younesi — Sun, 18 May 2008 12:14:48 -0000

Researchers in Uppsala, Sweden, have successfully shown that multiple biomarkers from different disease pathways can be used for predicting the risk of death from cardiovascular causes. The results of their study published in this month’s issue of “The New England Journal of Medicine” (May 15, 2008) suggest that “in elderly men with or without prevalent cardiovascular disease, the simultaneous addition of several biomarkers of cardiovascular and renal abnormalities (troponin I, N-terminal pro–brain natriuretic peptide, cystatin C, and C-reactive protein) substantially improves the risk stratification for death from cardiovascular causes beyond that of a model that is based only on established risk factors”.