Personalized Medicine in the Treatment of Cancer Essay

Personalized medicine is currently on the running towards becoming one of the leading advancing fields of health care determined by a person’s individual genetic make-up. It enables an understanding of the molecular framework of the human system so as to augment preventive therapeutic strategies. The move from reactive to preventive health care comes about with the implementation of personalized medicine as an alternative to traditional health care practices.

Throughout life, many individuals experience difficulties due to growing up in everyday life. While going in depth of the human life, it is discovered that there are many diseases and disorders that affect humans’ everyday functions. A very popular disease that has traumatically affected the human body is cancer. Cancer is a disease that spreads throughout your body in many ways. The purpose of cancer is to attach to a blood cell in your body and cause a plague within itself, causing the body to initially shut down and die. This disease contains many forms and have many causes to it. However its main goal is to destroy the human body.

According to the United States Breast Cancer Statistics (2016), in 2016 there will be an estimated 246,660 newly diagnosed cases of invasive breast cancer and 61,000 of non-invasive breast cancer among women. For this reason, when studying breast cancer based on a large-scale impact, it not only affects the patient themselves but, as well as their families and communities nationwide. Furthermore, many contributing factors lead to this being such a public health issue. Conclusively, there are specific programs, services, and policies that help to assist the contributing factors of such a public health threat. Nevertheless, breast cancer is still an increasing concern in society, and much-needed research is required to be able to detect and treat this disease.

HC2: With personalized medicine comes many areas of concern, including cost and ethics. It is well known that medical testing of any kind is typically very costly, and personalized medicine is no different. Medical institutions are often slow to adopt new technology and unwilling

The need for new and more effective treatment continues to increase and personalized medicine appears to be the answer to our prayers. With further research personalized medicine could revolutionize pharmaceuticals and to go out on a limb even find a cure for aids and other cancers. But it is too early to have high expectations for a science that has not been deeply explored. It seems that the fantasy of finding a perfect match treatment for each individual has raised support from many institutions including the White House and the FDA. There have been some recent personalized medicine treatments approved by the FDA and this has lead President Obama to bring forward the Precision Medicine Initiative (U.S. Food and Drug Administration), which would give millions in monetary support for research to be conducted on personalized medicine. The issue here is whether

Finding a panacea for cancer will be an arduous task with a very lengthy and discouraging trial and error period. Inevitably there will be some trying hurdles to get past in search of this cancer panacea, but, one that seems to be the most difficult to get passed is the severity and variety of the case presented. Doctors see this as overwhelming and very daunting since they do not want to get a patient’s hopes up if the medicine turns out not to work, or cause things to get worse. If doctors believe they have found this new and astonishing drug that cures all cancer at all stages and they prescribe it but turns out to only make the cancer worse, they will have to live knowing that they hurt all of these people and their families forever. In

Our incessant curiosity for knowledge and answers has prompted the intricate research institutions we know today. Among the volumes of research, scientists have searched for innovations to better understand the human body and edge closer to more individualized medicine. In 1990, breakthroughs in genetic technology allowed for researchers to begin a quest to map and understand all the genes of human beings. A mere 13 years later and just shy of $3 billion invested the Human Genome Project successfully mapped the billions of base pairs involved. With the ability to diagnose specific abnormalities, researchers and medical professionals have saved hundreds of ill children to which their survival was indefinite. However, with scientists continuing

Often, with the discovery of knowledge come difficult questions, thorny ethical issues, and unintended consequences. Armed with this new ability to sequence human genes, science grabbed medicine by the hand and charged into uncharted territory. Could we now “personalize” medicine?

It is no secret that cancer is leading cause of death in the world. It was estimated that in 2012, 14.1 million new cases of cancer occurred worldwide and 8.2 million people died as a result of cancer [1]. Cancer prevalence is increasing at an alarming rate, yet the progress of treatment has been slow, with benefits of treatment being measured in only months or even weeks. Most patients with a specific type of cancer at a certain stage will receive the exact same form of treatment, but it has been made clear that while the treatment works well for some, it does not for a significant amount of others. The treatment that patients receive today is based on

To attain an effect approach to care of cancer there need for a holistic approach on the benefits to the patient. In the year 2010, the number of new cases of cancer was estimated to at 1.52 million cases with close to 570,000 of these people expected to die. This marks a 68% improvement compared to the initial survival rate of five years upon diagnosis. Associated costs in cancer treatment are on the rise. In the United States, costs amount to $263.8 billion where direct medical cost accounts for $102.8 billion and the rest being the lost productivity in the U.S. workforce (Stjernswärd, 2011). Advances in treatment have downgraded the disease from a terminal disease to a chronic one. Drug utilization in the United States increased by 0.7% in the year 2009 and spending grew by 6.1% per person. This is an aspect attributable to new and expensive therapies offered to patients (Edge S.B. et al., 2010).

Personalized medicine is the novel medicine of the millennium where medicine used is determined via a person’s genetic makeup and how the tumor grows using personalized medicine. Personalized cancer treatments hold great promises as it involves selection of treatments based on a person’s unique genetic makeup and the genetic makeup of the tumor. Nowadays, a person receives a standard treatment plan with specific personalized cancer treatments which tailors for the right cancers.

The book The Personalized Medicine Revolution: How Diagnosing and Treating Disease are About to Change Forever is an interesting journey through the evolution of our scientific knowledge and subsequent technologies followed by a final foray into the most current accomplishments in personalized medicine and where it’s going.

As we know, everyone one has a unique gene sequence. Personalized medicine is helping us to understand disease characteristics at the gene level and create better treatments programs by studying our genetic profile. A web writer at the American Society for Clinical Pathology John Sarver (2013) says: “The

In 2010, Francis S. Collins penned The Language of Life: DNA and the Revolution in Personalized Medicine. At that time, he was the director of the Human Genome Project and now currently serves as the head of the National Institutes of Health. Collins is an American geneticist who was influential in discovering the genes responsible for cystic fibrosis and type II diabetes. The Language of Life: DNA and the Revolution in Personalized Medicine begins with a rough overview of genetic principles that will be used in further chapters. The book delves into dominant and recessive genes, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and other genetic mutations, as well as, various conditions that arise from the previous genetic circumstances.

Josko (2014) asserts that the era of personalized medicine is upon us, and that with the completion of the Human Genome Project, and advances in DNA sequencing techniques and