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What Personalizing Health Care Might Mean for You

The acceleration of research and development of sophisticated biologic medicines and vaccines to more effectively prevent and treat disease has given rise to a form of healthcare known as personalized medicine.
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Scientist pipetting samples into eppendorf tubes in research laboratory

The idea that viruses derived from an insect and the common cold can be used to fight cancer may sound like science fiction, but it's not.

Canadian researchers have recently begun a clinical trial, funded by the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, to investigate whether the two virus strains can treat certain types of cancer more effectively with fewer side effects.

This is just one example of the exciting new frontier for science that has occurred since the mapping of the human genome in 2003.

The acceleration of research and development of sophisticated biologic medicines and vaccines to more effectively prevent and treat disease has given rise to a form of healthcare known as personalized medicine.

What is personalized medicine?

The U.S. Federal Drug Administration describes it as the "tailoring of medical treatment to the individual characteristics, needs, and preferences of a patient during all stages of care, including prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up."

This approach may sound complex and time consuming, but the benefits are potentially immense for patients and our healthcare system.

Imagine being able to determine at an early age whether someone is susceptible to a certain disease. Is it possible that the onset of the disease could be prevented or treatment start earlier with fewer side effects? Aside from the obvious result of potentially saving and changing lives, this could also lead to saving time, money and resources.

This is not tomorrow's healthcare model. Actually, the U.S.-based Personalized Medicine Coalition offers some concrete examples of success today.

In the area of cardiovascular disease, an innovative diagnostic test has been developed to assess a heart transplant recipient's likelihood of rejecting a transplanted organ. The non-invasive test is done on a blood sample which is a vast improvement on the previous method of managing heart transplant rejection: an invasive heart biopsy. This new technique also gives hope that ongoing testing can predict risk of rejection and guide a more tailored drug treatment regime.

As the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR) tells us, the personalized medicine approach is showing promise not only in oncology and cardiovascular diseases but also in treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, psychiatric disorders, diabetes and obesity, arthritis and pain.

According to CIHR, personalized medicine, "promises to transform the delivery of healthcare to patients." It has the potential to, "not only focus on the identification of biomarkers and genetic signatures for prevention and prediction of therapeutic response, but will also enhance awareness about lifestyle and preventive lifestyle changes."

Canada can play a leading role in personalized medicine. For example, the Rx&D Health Research Foundation, Genome BC and a group of pharmaceutical companies have come together to launch a pilot project to support drug therapy decisions for family physicians.

The new research project is led by Dr. Martin Dawes at the University of British Columbia (UBC). This personalized medicine initiative will apply a genomic approach to screen for 33 markers in five genes of a patient's DNA.

The aim is to improve health outcomes for patients with fewer side effects.

Dr. Dawes, who is head of the family practice department at UBC, says the initiative is designed to "improve health care by offering genetic evidence that provides information for physicians about what drugs are safe and effective for patients."

Partnerships like this one are just the beginning. To make personalized medicine a reality for all Canadians we need to forge alliances involving governments, all aspects of industry like technology, insurance, pharmaceutical and device companies, as well as researchers.

This 21st century approach to medicine will ensure patients are given with the right treatment at the right time in the right way.

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The patients had a condition called Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome -- which means they had either no, or underdeveloped, vaginas. But researchers from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center's Institute for Regenerative Medicine found a way to use these girls' own muscle and epithelial cells to create "scaffolds" in the shape of a vagina that were then implanted into each patient. Over time, the body absorbed the scaffolds and new tissue formed.Now, up to eight years after the surgeries to implant these lab-engineered vaginas, all of the patients have normal organ functioning, including no negative impacts on sexual functioning or desire. (credit:Gettystock)
A man is able to see his wife, grandson and cat after receiving a bionic eye.(02 of05)
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Roger Pontz was one of four people in the U.S. to receive a "bionic eye" -- essentially, a surgical implantation of an artificial retina that works in tandem with special glasses that contain a tiny video camera and transmitter. The Associated Press explains how the process works:
Images from the camera are converted into a series of electrical pulses that are transmitted wirelessly to an array of electrodes on the surface of the retina. The pulses stimulate the retina's remaining healthy cells, causing them to relay the signal to the optic nerve. The visual information then moves to the brain, where it is translated into patterns of light that can be recognized and interpreted, allowing the patient to regain some visual function.
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Scientists reconstructed a penis for a man who had to have the organ amputated after an infection -- and now he's a dad.(03 of05)
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A botched circumcision left Mike Moore, now 30, with an infection that caused him to have nearly his entire penis amputated. But in 2007, he was able to connect with a Stanford plastic surgeon named Dr. Gordon Lee, who provided him with a reconstructed penis.Now, Moore is a dad -- he and his wife have naturally fathered a child, named Memphis. (credit:Gettystock )
Five people have reconstructed noses after scientists found a way to grow cartilage in a lab.(04 of05)
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The patients, who all had nose defects after undergoing skin cancer surgery, are able to breathe well and are satisfied with their appearances a year after receiving the lab-engineered cartilage. The cartilage was grown by researchers in the Department of Biomedicine at the University of Basel, who used the patients' own cells that were extracted from the nasal septum. (credit:Gettystock )
A man who had to have his hand amputated can actually feel with a specially made prosthetic hand.(05 of05)
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Dennis Aabo Sørensen, a man from Denmark who had to have his left hand amputated nine years ago, became the first man to actually feel, in real-time, touch sensations from a prototype prosthetic hand. With the hand, he could detect shape and consistency differences, and was also able to gauge grasping items with different strengths. “The sensory feedback was incredible,” Sørensen said in a statement. “I could feel things that I hadn’t been able to feel in over nine years.” The way the technology works is explained in a statement on the findings, which were published in the journal Science Translational Medicine earlier this year:
Micera and his team enhanced the artificial hand with sensors that detect information about touch. This was done by measuring the tension in artificial tendons that control finger movement and turning this measurement into an electrical current. But this electrical signal is too coarse to be understood by the nervous system. Using computer algorithms, the scientists transformed the electrical signal into an impulse that sensory nerves can interpret. The sense of touch was achieved by sending the digitally refined signal through wires into four electrodes that were surgically implanted into what remains of Sørensen’s upper arm nerves.
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