Industry panel discusses status of personalized medicine

Abstract

In concept, personalized medicine—which leverages genotype to guide decisions about therapeutics—is possible for all patients. But in practice, patients with cancer seem to be the focus. That’s because abnormalities in DNA sequences “are obviously what are driving” cancerous cells’ growth, said Walter Koch, head of global research for Roche Molecular Systems Inc., the diagnostics branch of Roche Group. In contrast, he said, a similar relationship does not exist between genotype and, say, inflammatory diseases’ severity. Koch said personalized medicine involves knowing the molecular pathophysiology of the patient’s disease and differentially diagnosing the disease on the basis of those underlying molecular defects. “The world of the future, of course, is that we hope we can differentially diagnose non-small cell lung cancer, for example, into what may turn out to be several dozen different subtypes,” he said, “and hopefully we have companion drugs that can target the defects for each one of those.”