Recent technological advances have progressed personalized medicine from the early era of treatments targeting specific genetic mutations in tumors, to individual, real-time monitoring of disease progression and treatment response using many different types of biomarkers.
By taking a multidisciplinary approach that integrates engineering, electronics and nanotechnology with state-of-the-art chemistry and molecular diagnostics tools, we are entering a new phase of personalized medicine.
Download this listicle to learn more about:
- Molecular diagnostics techniques
- Biosensors and wearables
- Machine learning's potential to improve diagnosis
Listicle
Four Top Trends in Personalized
Medicine
Joanna Owens, PhD
Personalized medicine is the tailoring of medicine towards an individual’s unique characteristics or the features
of their disease. Recent technological advances have progressed personalized medicine from the early era of
treatments targeting specific genetic mutations in tumors, such as Herceptin, to individual, real-time monitoring
of disease progression and treatment response using many different types of biomarkers. Here, we look at
some of the key developments advancing the field
1. Molecular diagnostics
A foundation of personalized medicine is the identification and subsequent detection of biomarkers – molecules
that can reliably indicate the risk or existence of disease – through molecular diagnostics. One of the most
common molecular diagnostic methods is next-generation sequencing (NGS). In recent years, NGS technology
has become faster and more accurate and the tools available to analyze NGS data have also improved.1 The
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reduced cost and time taken to sequence DNA has opened up whole new omics disciplines that can be used to
further personalize medicine, including the ability to sequence and understand an individual’s microbiome2 and
to monitor the “messages” within circulating tumor DNA
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Another key advance in molecular diagnostics is the shift towards isothermic nucleic acid detection methods, that
is, assays that can be run at a constant temperature.4 One of the downsides of conventional PCR-based methods
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is that they require amplification cycles at different temperatures, which can limit applications to within specialist
settings. But newer methods are superseding conventional PCR because of their ease and convenience. One such
example is loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP), which works by using one set of primers to detect
nucleic acid and then a further set of primers that form a loop to amplify the signal.
LAMP was widely adopted
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as an alternative to PCR-based tests during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the speed, stability and potential to
combine easily with other tests of this and other isothermal methods means they are now being explored across
a range of molecular diagnostics applications.
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2. Biosensors
A growing approach to biomarker detection is to look for circulating biomarkers in the blood or other body fluid
that can be obtained non-invasively, but a major limitation is that these biomarkers are often not stable enough
or present at high enough levels to enable reliable detection. This has led to an interest in designing synthetic
biomarkers or biosensors that can amplify the natural signals within the disease environment. One approach
to this has been DNA barcoding, which can be used to amplify and detect multiple biomarkers within a single
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