PRx Blog

Getting Personal

This past weekend I caught up with an old family friend who happens to be a practicing oncologist in the Bay Area. After the expected chit chat, we began discussing personalized medicine and if the ‘hype’ was legit or just a ‘media creation’ based on intelligent PR campaigns.

I learned that physicians are indeed moving towards personalized medicine as the true benefits of mapping the genome have made it from the lab to the doctor’s office.  Understanding our unique fabric makes it easier for doctors to steer patients down the correct treatment regimen. However, what I found most interesting (if able to interpret the conversation correctly) is that the benefits are not based on which therapy is best for the patient. Rather, the benefits of personalized medicine are based on what therapy is least likely going to show clinical success. Therefore the goal is to identify which has the greatest chance of failure, and then chose an alternative treatment if one exists. The true benefit is saving the precious time the patient has while not harming the body past the point a secondary therapy has little chance of being successful.

My next thought was what if there are three treatment options? Looking at early-stage prostate cancer there are multiple therapeutic options including surgery, radiation (internal and external) cryo and more. But once the cancer spreads beyond the prostate, and becomes a far more challenging disease, how do physicians make the next call? I know the answer is rely on skilled doctors to do their jobs, but the promise of personalized medicine combined with experienced doctors is an exciting prospect.

Yes, there is a long way to go, but how remarkable the progress made in such a short period of time. I spent some time speaking with the CEO of Target Discovery at BayBio a few weeks ago. Thought his comments dove-tailed nicely with my weekend conversation and wanted to share.

Posted by Nigel Smith on April 29, 2009 at 1:57 PM