Every disease has a variety of manifestations, and every person is different because of their genetics and the interaction with their environment. This means there can be huge variations in how people respond to treatment.
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With robust clinical trials we can be fairly confident that an approved treatment will be beneficial but it's possible that it might not help at all.
Personalised medicine is a new generation of medicine that targets therapies to both the patient and their specific disease. It delivers treatment to individuals that is both more efficient and more effective. This makes the journey to recovery shorter for the patient and maximises their chance of recovery
For well-characterised diseases, a genetic test could be used to determine which treatment is best suited for the patient
At the Translational Research Unit in the Canberra Hospital and the Centre for Personalised Immunology, we have well equipped laboratories with highly innovative scientists and medical researchers that are on the mission of helping people with immune diseases.
We try to understand disease mechanism (what we call pathogenesis) of some of the immune related disorders. These include immune deficiency disease such as Common Variable Immunodeficiency (CVID), and inflammatory diseases such as Sarcoidosis and autoimmune disease such as Lupus. We use advanced genome sequencing to identify damaging genetic variants might cause disease in that individual. These techniques help us to understand of the mechanism of the disease, which means we can develop targeted therapies.
For example, we investigate the function of the variants in the molecular pathways that control growth and function of blood cells and the development of the immune system. Then we collect the results of cellular and molecular studies to draw the picture of the how that syndrome develops.
In future our research will help to identify people susceptible to that disease before they develop the signs of the disease, with the hope of preventing disease manifestation in future
This means that the future is exciting for scientists. There is nothing more wonderful for us than knowing we can make difference for people, and we can actually save somebody’s life.
Personalised medicine will be discussed at the New Investigator Forum 7th June 2018 at the ANU. See ASMR.org.au/asmr-mrw/canberra
Response by Dr Bahar Miraghazadeh, postdoctoral fellow, Translational Research Unit, Canberra Hospital.
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