Precision Medicine Requires Precision Laboratories

Precision medicine, technologies, and molecular diagnostics

Introduction: Genetics, cellular and molecular medicines are cutting-edge sciences and technologies that play an important role in improving human health and quality of life. In addition, medical and biological sciences have clearly shown that the onset of diseases differs from person to person due to their different genetic profiles and variations in molecular basis. Therefore, it is feasible ...

Precision Chemistry for Precision Medicine

During the 2015 State of the Union address, President Obama unveiled plans for a $215 million Precision Medicine Initiative. The details of this plan were laid out by past and present directors of the National Institutes of Health, Harold Varmus and Francis Collins, in a commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine. While the announcement stood as a public statement of support for funding,...

Precision Medicine

Understanding the Precision in “Precision Medicine”

In this issue of The Oncologist, we begin a series of articles that consider the often problematic challenge of understanding and applying genomic information to the practice of oncology. Bardia et al. [1] describe the genomic findings from a patient with estrogen receptor (ER)-positive breast cancer after progression on hormonal therapy. In this case, tumor profiling revealed an ESR1 mutation ...

Precision Medicine — Too Much Precision , Not Enough Medicine ?

he problem is that human biology and disease are far too complex to ever be described with total precision. The same is true for that most precise of the sciences, physics. I doubt that we will ever completely understand the real world. Only God is supposed to be able to do that. Human knowledge is fractal: the more you know about any subject, the more questions arise. That’s why the best scien...