My latest post as part of my work at Fabric Genomics.

Precision medicine is a form of medicine that uses information about a person’s own genes or proteins to prevent, diagnose, or treat disease.¹ When we think of precision medicine, we often focus on cancer and the recent efforts to specifically target treatment based on the genetic composition of a tumor (somatic) or the person’s germline. While it is early days, the health gains of this approach are quite significant with better outcomes shown in multiple studies² and even data showing lower overall health costs.³ However, the point of precision medicine is not only to optimize treatment for cancer, but also to target health interventions generally for all conditions. In fact, we see the application of precision medicine to high volume diseases such as diabetes and heart disease and even lifestyle interventions such as diet and exercise.

Nowhere is this more challenging than for patients suffering from a rare disease. Ironically it is common to have a rare disease. More than 25 million Americans and more than 400 million people worldwide suffer from one of over 7000 rare conditions, defined as those conditions having an incidence of 1 in 200,000 or less. Precision medicine has focused on big data approaches to studying more common conditions, thereby leaving out those with rare conditions. Lacking a diagnosis, most of these patients and their families are on a “diagnostic odyssey.” These patients typically spend more than five years seeking accurate diagnosis and might see up to eight doctors, often receiving many misdiagnoses and differing opinions on their journey. Along the way, they may be exposed to harmful treatments and invasive testing. It is clear that comprehensive genetic testing gives the best possibility of getting to the exact diagnosis efficiently. Still, historically, genetic data have been available to a minority of patients: only those referred to a clinical geneticist for testing.

For the complete post see https://fabricgenomics.com/2020/12/bringing-the-promise-of-precision-medicine-to-rare-disease/