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Precision medicine is reshaping healthcare by moving away from a one-size-fits-all approach to more personalized care. By understanding each patient's genetic makeup, environment, and lifestyle, healthcare professionals can develop targeted treatment and prevention strategies. In this blog, we’ll explore how this approach is making treatments more effective, identifying at-risk individuals, and potentially reducing healthcare costs while addressing key challenges along the way.
Tailored treatment plans
A precision medicine approach embraces the fact that each and every patient is a unique individual with a nuanced and complex health history. By utilizing the insights provided by a patient’s genetic profile, environmental exposures and lifestyle data, precision medicine gives healthcare professionals the ability to more accurately predict which treatment and prevention strategies are going to be most effective for that individual.
For example, precision medicine has high-impact applications in the oncology space, such as when a tumor is failing to respond to current standard treatments. Scientists can sequence the tumor’s genome to identify which specific genetic mutations are present and then utilize this data to select the most effective treatment option available. The development of the protein inhibiting drug imatinib, which targets the fusion oncogene BCR-ABL1 to treat chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), is one of the first major examples of precision medicine being used to treat cancer. The drug is now widely recognized as the go-to treatment for CML, as opposed to more traditional therapies such as chemotherapy.
Identifying at-risk patients
The application of precision medicine isn’t solely limited to tailored treatment of conditions but, vitally, can also be used to identify individuals at increased risk of developing specific conditions and to inform preventative strategies accordingly.
For example, people who are born female and have specific genetic variants in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are at a significantly increased risk of developing breast or ovarian cancer during their lifetime – up to an 85% lifetime risk in cases of breast cancer and up to a 63% lifetime risk in ovarian cancer. This is a dramatic difference compared to those who do not carry a mutation, who have an overall breast cancer risk of approximately 15%. As such, precision medicine initiatives like genetic screening can help healthcare providers to identify individuals who carry these variants and who are therefore at increased risk of developing breast and ovarian cancers. Patients can then make informed decisions around taking preventive steps, such as undergoing risk-reducing surgical procedures (such as bilateral mastectomy which can reduce the risk of breast cancer by 85 -100% in women with a BRCA mutation, and bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy which can reduce the risk of ovarian cancer by approximately 80%), taking mutation-specific medications (such as tamoxifen), or undergoing regular screenings.
Reduced cost and increased return on investment
While both tailored treatment plans and preventive actions are shown to significantly improve health outcomes for patients, another key aspect of precision medicine is its potential to reduce cost of care, as well as burden on already stressed healthcare systems.
One study, published in July 2023 by researchers from Queen’s University Belfast, demonstrated reduced R&D costs and greater return on investment (ROI) for precision oncology medicines that used a companion diagnostic approach (such as genetic testing) compared to those developed using the traditional one-size-fits-all approach. The team was able to demonstrate that the cost of bringing a precision oncology medicine to market was $1.1billion less than non-precision oncology medicines, with the key driver of the cost reduction being the increased probability of success in precision medicine clinical trials (accounting for a difference of $591.3 million). Additional data analysis also illustrated that there was a 27% increase in ROI for precision oncology medicines over non-precision treatments.
While this study demonstrated a successful cost reduction in the oncology space, there is also evidence to suggest that precision medicine approaches could produce incredibly high-cost therapies, creating a system where only those who can afford to pay for private, high-end precision treatments can gain access. There are also concerns that, if not implemented in an international, strategic manner, precision medicine has the potential to increase the gulf between populations which are well-represented in the available genetic and biological data and those which are not.
While precision medicine holds great promise for transforming patient care and reducing costs, it also brings new challenges, particularly around access and equity. Balancing the potential for groundbreaking, tailored therapies with the need for widespread, inclusive implementation will be key for ensuring that the benefits of precision medicine reach everyone who needs them. For more information, please download our whitepaper on the expansion of precision medicine across global markets:
