Leroy Hood on Predictive, Preventive and Personalized Medicine
One of the genome revolution’s leading visionairies, Leroy Hood, share his thoughts about where the revolution is taking us. (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, August 24, 2005)
On the predictive aspect:
My prediction is that within 10 years, we will have a predictive medicine that will have two separate components.
No. 1, it will have the ability to sequence every human’s genome for less than $1,000. We will be able to make predictive health histories for each individual from the varying genes that come from that sequencing.
No. 2, we will have a little hand-held nanotechnology device that will prick your finger and make a thousand measurements and by wireless, send that to a server. It will analyze all your past records.
It will say, “Nothing’s changed. You’re fine. Do it again in six months.” Or it will say, “Go see your oncologist or go see your rheumatologist” or whoever might be appropriate.
Your physician would get an e-mail, too.
On personalized medicine:
Take into account that your genome and mine differ by 6 million nucleotides (which is the basic unit of organic acids found in all living cells). Then therefore, we’re susceptible to all sorts of combinations of diseases.
We have to treat you differently than we treat me and everybody else. How we create an era of highly personalized medicine will depend entirely on new diagnostic, therapeutic and ultimately, these preventive techniques.
What we’ll do is feed your genome sequence into a grid network of computers that will do many different kinds of analyses simultaneously. You’ll get a summary sheet that says here are the things and here are the probabilities that you’ll likely have to worry about in the future.
For more, see Newsweek’s profiles of Leroy Hood and other leading geneticists.
Pointer from The Personal Genome.
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1 opinion for Leroy Hood on Predictive, Preventive and Personalized Medicine
Genetics and Health » Carboplatin Chemotherapy for BRCA-Related Breast Cancer
May 1, 2006 at 6:59 pm
[…] Personalized medicine tailored to a person’s genetic make-up is already in use. For women with breast cancer associated with the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, carboplatin may be 20 times more effective than standard chemotherapies. […]
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