We promote personalised and precision medicine
Personalized medicine recognizes that each patient is unique. By using specific diagnostic tests for some diseases, doctors can predict how a patient will respond to a treatment, and also determine the best dose and the appropriate duration of a medication.
What impact does precision medicine have on society?
Early, personalised diagnosis improves a patient’s prognosis, makes treatment more effective and the healthcare system more efficient. Thanks to precision medicine, the response rate for cancer treatments is 30.6% compared to 4.9% for traditional treatments. We have early diagnosis methods, stratification strategies to assign certain treatments to specific groups of patients, and predictive tools with great potential impact on health and society. However, only half the patients who should do have access to the most advanced diagnostic techniques because their access to the market and, above all, the public health systems is slow and limited.
What does biotechnology do to mitigate this impact?
The development of personalised medicine is tied to technological advances (including gene sequencing) that have allowed us to precisely analyse patients’ biology, their DNA, RNA and key proteins, and precisely determine not only the molecular foundations of a disease but also the factors that put patients at higher risk of developing them.
Research and innovation are essential tools for finding the right therapeutic strategy for each patient.
How are AseBio and its members working to address this challenge?
The Spanish biotechnology industry is a pioneer in identifying biomarkers and developing innovative techniques to analyse them. We have the opportunity to implement the technological advances available for early diagnosis and to generate new knowledge that impacts patients’ health. At AseBio, we promote the development of these tools and the incorporation of new biomarkers into the healthcare system.
- We have a Personalised Medicine and Advanced Diagnostics workgroup through which we are working to improve the development of these tools, their access to the market and the regulatory framework to promote personalised medicine.