Personalized medicine: revolutionizing drug discovery and patient care

Advances in human genome research are opening the door to a new paradigm fo r practising medicine that promises to transform healthcare. Personalized m edicine, the use of marker-assisted diagnosis and targeted therapies derive d from an individual's molecular profile, will impact the way drugs are dev eloped and medicine is practiced. Knowledge of the molecular basis of disea se will lead to novel target identification, toxicogenomic markers to scree n compounds and improved selection of clinical trial patients, which will f undamentally change the pharmaceutical industry. The traditional linear pro cess of drug discovery and development will be replaced by an integrated an d heuristic approach. In addition, patient care will be revolutionized thro ugh the use of novel molecular predisposition, screening, diagnostic, progn ostic, pharmacogenomic and monitoring markers. Although numerous challenges will need to be met to make personalized medicine a reality, with time, th is approach will replace the traditional trial-and-error practice of medici ne.