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Laying the foundations for personalized medicines

Nature Biotechnology volume 16, pages 6–8 (1998)Cite this article

The scope of human genetic diversity is forcing drug makers to examine more closely the molecular mechanisms behind complex disease and drug response.

In an age when people in developed societies expect individual treatment in all spheres of life, the provision of drugs often appears clumsy. Medicine today is geared around taking statistical information about the general population and then applying it to the individual: Physicians are forced to make empirical decisions about types of treatment and drug dosage based on information that has been gathered on the basis of population averages, rather than individual profiles. Drug developers have advanced chemical and biological production methods that can provide an exquisite variety of compounds, but they devote little effort to differentiating groups of patients who respond in different ways to their products. Little surprise then, that "consumers" flock to "alternative therapies" that, if nothing else, claim to deliver attention to individual needs and desires.

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Figure 1: Variation between individuals means that a drug is often effective in only a subset of patients.

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  1. Andrew Marshall

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  1. Andrew Marshall
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Marshall, A. Laying the foundations for personalized medicines. Nat Biotechnol 16 (Suppl 2), 6–8 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/5138

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