641 Personalized Medicine (2014) 11(7), 641–649 ISSN 1741-0541
part of
Special Report
Special Focus Issue: Genomic Medicine in 2014
10.2217/PME.14.55 © 2014 Future Medicine Ltd
Rapid advances in ‘omics’ sciences and technologies have elevated the relevance of
personalized medicine. This article reviews the current advances in the application
of personalized medicine, outlines and summarizes the key areas that still need to
be addressed and gives recommendations in this direction. Eighteen relevant high-
level reports on personalized medicine were reviewed in order to identify the gaps
and needs that are present for the implementation of personalized medicine. We
identify 12 key areas that represent the main obstacles on the road towards the
personalization of medicine and divide these 12 key areas into four domains, namely:
scientific research and stakeholder collaboration; translational tools; regulations and
systematic early dialog with regulators; and uptake into healthcare systems. All of the
evaluated reports agree on the imperative need for intensive collaboration among
all stakeholders with early active participation and changes in the current healthcare
infrastructure.
Keywords: cost–beneitanalysis•genomics•healthcaresystems•P4health•personalized
medicine•publichealthgenomics•stakeholdercollaboration•systematicearlydialog
•technologytransfer•translationalresearch
Genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and
metabolomics are all ‘omics’ sciences that
are thriving, pushing the personalization of
medicine forward. Even though the concept
of personalized medicine has been around
for over 2000 years – Hippocrates consid-
ered it “…far more important to know what
person the disease has than what disease the
person has” – the developments in the omics
sciences in the past decades have enabled a
rapid progression towards the concept of
universally accessible, truly personalized
medicine.
The personalization of medicine is a mis-
sion. However, the journey has only just
started, and although we have made good
progress since the approval of Herceptin
®
(Roche Pharma AG, Grenzach-Wyhlen,
Germany) for the treatment of HER2
+
metastatic breast cancer 16 years ago, there
are still many obstacles to conquer in order
to reach the target of truly personalized
medicine. Over 100 approved drugs in the
USA contain information on biomarkers in
their label (Figure 1) and over 30 targeted
drugs have been approved based on the use
of different biomarkers in order to assign the
appropriate treatment to each patient indi-
vidually by selecting the correct population
or adjusting the dose, resulting in improved
efficacy and improved safety profiles [1] .
Personalized treatment technologies are
already being applied in several fields with
success. Cancer and rare diseases are the
best-known examples, but other fields, such
as nutrition [2,3] , psychology, cardiology [4]
and infectious diseases [5,6] , have also suc-
cessfully applied the concept of personalized
medicine for prevention, diagnosis, correct
dosing, prediction of differential response
and adverse event prevention. Besides, other
interesting applications are being pursued,
such as the in silico models that predict drug
sensitivity of patient-derived cancer cells
Working towards personalization in
medicine: main obstacles to reaching this
vision from today’s perspective
Lada Leyens*
,‡,1
Denis
Horgan
‡,2
, Jonathan A
Lal
1
, Kirsten Steinhausen
3
,
Kapaettu Satyamoorthy
4
& Angela Brand
1
1
InstituteforPublicHealthGenomics,
DepartmentofGenetics&CellBiology,
SchoolforOncology&Developmental
Biology(GROW),FacultyofHealth
Medicine&LifeSciences,Maastricht
University,Maastricht,TheNetherlands
2
EuropeanAllianceforPersonalized
Medicine,Brussels,Belgium
3
EuropeanScienceFoundation&
FurtwangenUniversity,Furtwangen,
Germany
4
ManipalLifeSciencesCentre,Manipal
University,Manipal,India
*Authorforcorrespondence:
lada.leyens@maastrichtuniversity.nl
‡
Authorscontributedequally
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