/Cancer Theranostics

For more than two millennia, medicine has not wavered from its aspiration of being personalized. In ancient times, Hippocrates combined an assessment of the four humours—blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile—to determine the best course of treatment for each patient. Today, the sequence of the four chemical building blocks that comprise DNA, coupled with telltale proteins in the blood, enable more accurate medical predictions. These include whether an individual is developing an illness now or will develop it many years in the future, will respond positively to treatment, or will suffer a serious reaction to a drug. But what is different about medicine today—and the reason the word “personalized” has been added for emphasis—is that technology has brought us much closer to exquisite precision in disease diagnosis and treatment.

Genomics is the study of all the genes of a cell, the DNA, mRNA and protein levels.As Genomics studies the entire genetic chain it is the most advanced diagnostic test available presently. Genomics is getting widely used in the leading institutes in field of cancer genetics testing and cancer genome testing across the world for treating diseases like cancer, heart disease, diabetes, neurological disorders, psychiatric disorders etc.

Genomics will help from being reactive to predictive mode of treatment.The key to effectively using clinical genomics to improve cancer treatment and outcomes lies in determining which sets of genes and gene interactions affect different subsets of cancers. The results of these genomic studies and research can then be used to develop clinically validated tests that provide the genomic profile of an individual’s tumor, helping understand whether patients are likely to benefit from and respond to cancer therapies, or whether those patients are likely to experience a recurrence of their cancer.

Thus,while traditional drug discovery moves from “Target > Drug > Disease”, genomics moves from “Disease > Target > Mechanisms > Drugs”