USciences Bulletin - University of the Sciences in Philadelphia

THE BULLETIN: THE STATE OF PERSONALIZED MEDICINE PAGE 9
Our Own Personal 0.4 Percent and What to Do with It
Experts gather to present the state of the personalized medicine field
By Kevin Kaufman
Aiming to shed some light on the
rapidly emerging, ever-changing,
and heretofore unknown field of
personalized medicine, USciences’
Mayes College of Healthcare Business
and Policy and the Program in
Personalized Medicine and Targeted
Therapeutics (P 2 MT 2 ) hosted an
engaging and informative panel
discussion in April. “Making the
Connections: Personalized Medicine—
From Promise to Public Health and
Policy” is part of an annual speaker
series hosted by Mayes College and
made possible by an unrestricted
educational grant from AstraZeneca
Pharmaceuticals.
From left to right: The distinguished panel included moderator George E. Downs, PharmD;
Amalia M. Issa, PhD, MPH; Michael F. Christman, PhD; and Stephen Kimmel, MD, MSCE.
Field experts and panelists Stephen
Kimmel, MD, MSCE; Michael
Christman, PhD; and USciences’
AMALIA M. ISSA, PhD, MPH, who
serves not only as director of the
Program in Personalized Medicine and
Targeted Therapeutics as well as chair
of the Department of Health Policy and
Public Health, individually addressed
different aspects of the field. They
then took nearly an hour of intense
questioning from attendees.
The National Institutes of Health defines
“personalized medicine” as the “emerging
practice of medicine that uses an individual’s
genetic profile to guide decisions
made with regard to the prevention, diagnosis,
and treatment of disease.”
Or, “the right medicine for the right
person at the right time,” stated
Dr. Kimmel, a professor of both
medicine and epidemiology at the
Perelman School of Medicine at the
University of Pennsylvania. “It’s the
most appropriate therapy to the most
appropriate patient.”
Since the human genome was first
mapped in 2001, it’s been determined
that humans are more or less 99.6
percent similar. It’s that 0.4 percent that
makes us unique and determines height
and aspects of our personality, along
with the likelihood of getting breast
cancer or the likelihood of responding
to a drug, said Dr. Christman,
president and CEO of Coriell Institute
for Medical Research.
In only 13 years of intense study,
knowledge has increased dramatically,
but researchers are still wrapping
their arms around what exactly this
knowledge can be used for. Progress
has been slow but promising,
according to Dr. Kimmel.
“Scientific progress doesn’t move all
that fast. But genetics still has great
potential to improve health,” said Dr.
Kimmel. “I think it’s going to take
time—some innovation and new ways
of thinking, carefully done studies,
including randomized trials—but more
often than we are doing now. And a lot
of patience. It’s progress and promise,
not hype and disappointment.
“We’re not quite to the
point where we can go
to a pharmacist and hand
them our DNA sequence
for a prescription.”
- Dr. Stephen Kimmel
Continued on page 10