Scientists and doctors do not yet fully understand how different people develop diseases and respond to treatments. The result is a “one-size-fits-all” approach to medicine based on broad population averages. This traditional practice often fails to achieve its goal because everyone's genetic makeup is slightly different from everyone else's, often in very important ways that can ultimately impact health.

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The advent of precision medicine brings us closer to more accurate, predictable, and powerful healthcare that is tailored to the individual patient. The growing understanding of genetics and genomics — and how they affect everyone's health, disease, and drug response — enables doctors to provide better disease prevention, more accurate diagnoses, safer drug prescriptions, and more effective treatments for the many diseases and conditions that affect our health.

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Tailoring healthcare to each person's unique genetic makeup — that is the promising idea behind precision medicine, which is also known as individualized medicine, personalized medicine or genomic medicine.

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What is precision medicine?

Precision medicine is a medical approach that treats and prevents diseases based on individual genetic, molecular, biological, environmental, and lifestyle information. The principle of precision medicine is based on the assumption that every person is unique and therefore needs personalized medical treatment based on their specific characteristics and needs.

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This perspective became important on the one hand due to the use of modern technologies and the ever more precise knowledge of the genome (the entirety of gene information) and the proteome (the entirety of the proteins of a cell or a living being), metabolomics (the study of all metabolic products that are present in a cell, a tissue or an organism), with the help of which doctors and scientists can collect data in order to obtain a comprehensive picture of a patient. On the other hand, developments in information technology, which can be used to analyze large amounts of individual data, also contribute to this.

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The European Union (EU) attaches such great importance to these developments that two important initiatives have been taken: On the one hand, in 2015, the Council of the European Union published a declaration that also contains a definition of terms: Personalized medicine means “a medical concept [...] which, based on the characterization of the phenotypes and genotypes of individuals (e.g. molecular profiling, imaging diagnostics, lifestyle information), is the optimal treatment strategy for the respective The right person Determines the time and/or determines the predisposition of the disease and/or enables timely and targeted prevention.”

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The terms “personalized medicine”, “individualized medicine”, “targeted medicine” and “precision medicine” are often used synonymously. However, since 2011, the US National Research Council has recommended the use of the term “precision medicine” for medicine based on phenotypic and genotypic characteristics of an individual, as it makes it clear that the effectiveness of a treatment strategy is identified based on factors such as genetics, environment and behavior of an individual.

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It is therefore less about creating a personalized strategy for an individual, as the word “personalized” suggests, but about developing more precise forms of treatment based on additional features that vary significantly (National Research Council (U.S.) 2011; NIH 2020c). Although the European Commission is working with the term “personalized medicine,” the description shows that it is in fact “precision medicine.”

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What are the benefits of precision medicine?

Throughout history, medicine has been largely reactive. Even today, illnesses are usually only treated or cured once they have already broken out. And because the genetic and environmental factors that cause serious illnesses such as cancer, Alzheimer's, and diabetes are not fully known, efforts to treat these diseases are often inaccurate, unpredictable, and ineffective.

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The already mentioned breakthroughs and rapid developments in the so-called “omics” sciences, which include “genomics”, “transcriptomics” (German: transcriptomics), “proteomics” (German: proteomics), “metabolomics” (German: metabolomics), and information and communication technology significantly drive the increasing importance of the field.

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Precision medicine has the potential to improve the effectiveness of medical treatments, reduce the likelihood of side effects, and improve overall health outcomes.

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How can precision medicine change our health?

In summary, precision medicine has the potential to change our health in various ways:

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1. Personalized diagnosis

By analyzing a patient's genetic, molecular, biological, environmental, and lifestyle information, doctors can make a more accurate diagnosis and identify diseases earlier.

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2. Personalized treatment

Based on a patient's individual data, doctors can plan personalized treatment that is tailored to the patient's specific needs and characteristics. This can help improve treatment effectiveness and minimize side effects.

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3. Early detection of diseases

Precision medicine can help identify diseases before symptoms occur. This allows doctors to initiate early treatment and reduce the likelihood of complications.

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4. Development of new therapies

Precision medicine can help accelerate the development of new therapies by providing doctors and researchers with better insights into the biological mechanisms of diseases and their individual differences.

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5. Avoiding unnecessary treatments

Personalized diagnosis and treatment can avoid unnecessary treatments and medications that are not effective for a particular patient.

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Overall, precision medicine can help improve healthcare, increase treatment effectiveness, and improve patients' quality of life.