Personalized medicine is the paradigm of the future: treatment options customized for individual patients. There are a number of obstacles in the way before personalized medicine becomes the norm. For example, only about 8% of all GIST patients get mutational testing, a valuable tool for diagnosing and planning precision treatment.

The concept of personalized medicine is the “targeting medications to a specific group of people, based on genetic information, disease progression, biomarkers, and other factors.” The biomedical community has made significant strides in this arena as of late. For them, the goal is to create treatment options that are custom-crafted for each patient.

personalized-medicine-pillsEconomic costs and drug regulation are two of the major obstacles standing in the way of personalized medicine. For example, it ranges from $1 billion to about $5 billion to bring a drug to market. One reason for the high cost is the amount of time that is involved. It takes about 10 to 15 years to successfully launch an individual drug. That is equivalent to the time it took to complete the Human Genome Project.

This article from Forbes Techonomy presents an overview of the current state of personalized medicine, and the roadblocks to its implementation. 

The Life Raft Group’s Executive Director, Norman Scherzer, discusses this concept in an informative article from our newsletter archives.

Share your thoughts on personalized medicine in the comment section below.