When will data-powered personalized health hit ‘escape velocity’? — Tech News and Analysis
gigaom.com
A handful of leaders in health data suggest that data-driven personalized health approaches could achieve mainstream adoption in five years, with some saying valuable but intermittent work could happen even sooner.
From gadgets that monitor our activity and vital signs, to startups that let us explore our own DNA - there are more technologies than ever for collecting and analyzing personal health data.
For now, the applications of personal health data are mostly the stuff of “Quantified Self” hobbyists and experimental research. But some say it may not be too long before personal health data becomes a powerful part of the mainstream clinical experience.
At the Health 2.0 conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, David Ewing Duncan, a journalist and author of “When I’m 164,” asked a panel of health data leaders when data-driven personalized health might reach “escape velocity”.
Personalized medicine for Parkinson’s closer to reality | KurzweilAI
kurzweilai.net
Human induced pluripotent stem cells (credit: UCSD)
A nationwide consortium of scientists at 20 institutions, led by a principal faculty member at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI), has used stem cells to take a major step toward developing personalized medicine to treat Parkinson’s disease.
In part supported by the Harvard Miller Consortium for the Development of Nervous System Therapies, the team of scientists created induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) from the skin cells of patients and at-risk individuals carrying genetic mutations implicated in Parkinson’s disease, and used those cells to derive neural cells, providing a platform for studying the disease in human cells outside of patients.
The researchers also report that although approximately 15 genetic mutations are linked to forms of Parkinson’s, many seem to affect themitochondria, the cell unit that produces most of its energy.
“This is the first comprehensive study of how human neuronal cells can be models of Parkinson’s, and how it might be treated,” said Ole Isacson, a leader of the study, an HSCI principal faculty member, and a Harvard Medical School professor of neurology, based at McLean Hospital’s Neuroregeneration Laboratory.
Wielding Genomes in the Fight Against Cancer
“Dr. Mukherjee said that in “Let Me Down Easy,” a play by Anna Deavere Smith, a character observes that giving chemotherapy is like hitting a dog with a stick to get rid of fleas. Flea ointment would work better, he said — but you might need six types of ointment.”
Preparing for Precision Medicine — NEJM
nejm.orgThis scenario illustrates the fundamental idea behind personalized medicine: coupling established clinical–pathological indexes with state-of-the-art molecular profiling to create diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic strategies precisely tailored to each patient’s requirements — hence the term “precision medicine.” Recent biotechnological advances have led to an explosion of disease-relevant molecular information, with the potential for greatly advancing patient care. However, progress brings new challenges, and the success of precision medicine will depend on establishing frameworks for regulating, compiling, and interpreting the influx of information that can keep pace with rapid scientific developments. In addition, we must make health care stakeholders aware that precision medicine is no longer just a blip on the horizon — and ensure that it lives up to its promise.
“It was perhaps the best demonstration yet — albeit only in an animal model — that stem cell biology sits potentially on the cusp of a completely new kind of clinical therapy, one in which a patient’s own cells are rebooted into an embryonic-like state, genetically repaired, differentiated back into a desired cell type, and returned to the body.”
—"'The key, I think, to the future of cancer drug development is to try to identify which patients are likely to respond and to do so in' early-stage clinical trials."
Ten years ago, targeted cancer treatments like Avastin and Herceptin were lauded as the silver bullets of chemotherapy. What we’ve learned since then is that for these targeted treatments to work, you have to closely match them to the precise genotype of a patient’s tumor (and, if I recall, in some cases of the patient, too). While this allows doctors to fine tune treatment for patients with tumors containing these mutations (making treatment more personalized), it means that the number of patients that can be helped (translated: the potential market) by any given targeted drug is that much smaller.
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Individualized medicine is the future of pharmacy
As science advances, we can do better. Pharmacists practicing personalized medicine will develop individual drug therapies based on a patient’s genetic code. This is being aided by advances in conducting genetic testing in a rapid and relatively inexpensive manner.
You won’t be seeing as much of the “one dose fits all” brand of medicine that was practiced for generations. Instead, your pharmacist — using information culled from your genetic code — will develop a drug-therapy program specifically for you.
What works for me...
…may or may not work for you.
It all kind of depends on a number of underlying factors: genetic predispositions, epigenetic differences, environmental cues, social context, trauma and abuse, personality styles, and on and on.
We find groups of people that we identify with as we struggle to live life well, place meaning in our lives, deal with the pain and struggles, and seek help from ways of living that just don’t seem to work anymore.
I am an alcoholic. The meaning of this word resonates with me. The reason why I am lies across a myriad of genetic, environmental, psychological and spiritual factors which combined with a series of choices I made to push me beyond the limit that this label implies. I’m okay now with the label but I haven’t always been. It helps me to be cognizant of behavior that leads (or doesn’t lead) me to be my best version of me. The acknowledgement allows me then to pursue a journey of recovery and to address the underlying patterns, beliefs and situations that minimized my ability to choose.
But not all people recover in the same way. Some, in fact, never “recover” and this is quite sad. But still, some find AA, others church, others Lifering, others therapists, while others simply make a choice one day and never drink again. It’s quite interesting to see how the various pathways come about.
But then some become so ardent in the belief that what worked for them must work for everyone else. And so they proselytize. The argument goes…if you found the cure for cancer wouldn’t you want to tell everyone? Unfortunately, the argument is more like “there are various kinds of cancers and you’ve found the particular variation that was specific to you.” There certainly are similarities that one can see in and amongst varieties of sub-groups (like Her2+ forms of breast cancer) and sometimes the prescription may be helpful. But many times its not and its ineffective at best, damaging at worst.
I am a big fan of the notion of personalized medicine just as much as I am for a personalized treatment program or spiritual program or education program. That said, I still have a sense that there are overarching notions of characteristics or qualities that connect to human health but the path to each may be quite diverse.
Supreme court unanimously rules against personalized medicine patent!
Just a few minutes ago the Supreme Court released their decision in the Mayo case, see here for the Simply Statistics summary of the case. The court ruled unanimously that the personalized medicine test could not be patented. Such a strong ruling likely has major implications going forward for the field of personalized medicine. At the end of the day, this decision was based on an interpretation of statistical correlation. Stay tuned for a special in-depth analysis in the next couple of days that will get into the details of the ruling and the implications for personalized medicine.
