The omics pipeline: the pathway to drug discovery and personalised/precision medicine

Abstract

The last 20 years has seen rapid advances in genomics, proteomics and other omics technologies, with both the human genome and proteome now being at >90% completion at high stringency.1 This same period has also seen a paradigm shift in medical treatment from the traditional ‘one size fits all’ approach, where all patients receive the same standardised treatment for a particular disease, to a personalised/precision medicine (PM) approach where treatment is tailored for an individual based on an understanding of their individual systems biology (comprehensive in-depth monitoring of genes, proteins) and disease related pathways, lifestyle and environmental factors.2 The success of PM is closely linked to the discovery and validation of sensitive and specific protein and peptide disease-related biomarkers, and subsequent development of rapid, robust, sensitive and specific clinical assays for detection and surveillance. The omics pipeline (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, interactomics and microbiomics) can provide an overall systems biology perspective of health and disease, leading to the identification of potential biomarkers for disease detection and surveillance and the identification of novel drug targets.3 In this presentation I will address the key components of the omics toolbox and illustrate how they have advanced our knowledge of the biology underlying health and disease giving an improved foundation for the advancement of PM for cancer.