Genomics and microfluidics for precision medicine
A recent publication in Nature shows how genomics can be used for precision medicine in treating breast cancer.
It seems that this kind of news is a long time coming. It’s been 18 years since the end of the human genome project.
Yet, it is good news.
Are we now going to see the exponential rise of precision medicine?
What this means for patients: This could be the beginning of an era of the right drug for the right patient at the right time.
Earlier this year Nature published a perspective on using microfluidic systems (organ on chip) for precision medicine. The authors point out that genomics is unlikely to be able to encompass all the complexity that is needed to achieve truly precise treatments.
What this means for translational research: It is likely that the future will include functional diagnostics achieved through organ-on-the-chip models with a patient’s own cells in the clinic to determine what treatment he or she will get. How fast we get there will be determined by research in the next 5-10 years and how well everyone comes together to solve innovation bottlenecks that will hold the field of precision medicine back.
The implications are that the future of precision medicine will combine different omics, digital health, and functional diagnostics. It will in other words it will take multiple disciplines working together to make it happen.
What this means for biotech companies: Both biotech companies developing new therapies and those developing new diagnostics need to think ‘collaborate’ more than ‘compete’. It’s the solutions that integrate with an array of other technologies that will have an advantage.
It should not have taken 18 years for headlines to be heralding the arrival of genomics-based precision medicine for breast cancer.
Reducing the translational gap is the vision that drives us at BioSci Consulting. This is why we are building translational ecosystems, where the types of collaborations that are needed to realize fundamental differences in how medicine is practiced.
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(1) Andre, F., Filleron, T., Kamal, M. et al. Genomics to select treatment for patients with metastatic breast cancer. Nature (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05068-3
(2) Ayuso, J.M., Virumbrales-Muñoz, M., Lang, J.M. et al. A role for microfluidic systems in precision medicine. Nat Commun 13, 3086 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-30384-7
