The Personalised Medicine World Conference (PMWC) was held recently in Israel as a forum for genetic researchers to share and discuss the latest findings in the field of using genetic coding to tailor medical treatments to individual people.
The concept of personalised medicine is that each of us has a unique DNA coding, as well as different environmental exposures, diet, habits and behaviours. These factors can all influence our body’s ability to heal and to respond to standard medical treatments. For this reason, a treatment may be very effective in curing one patient, while another patient with the same condition doesn’t respond to the treatment at all.
The concept of personalised medicine first came to light in the 1980s, though the major growth in the area has been in the past decade. Much of the top innovation in the field has come out of Israel, with many researchers and companies in the small nation focussed on developing new treatments under the personalised medicine umbrella.
One Israeli company, Optimata is at the forefront of personalised medicine in the region, having developed an insightful technology that uses sophisticated algorithms to create a computer model that can predict how each individual will respond to specific treatments, helping doctors develop the most effective treatment plan for their patients.
This is a great advancement, as under conventional systems, doctors have no way of knowing how each individual patient will respond to a chemotherapy drug, even when a treatment may be statistically more effective than alternatives.
For further information, see:
http://www.israel21c.org/201007288136/health/in-israel-medicine-is-getting-personal