Imagine a world where every patient receives a treatment plan as unique as their DNA, where the guesswork in medicine becomes a relic of the past. This is not science fiction—this is the promise of precision medicine, a revolutionary approach that is reshaping the future of healthcare by harnessing the power of genetics, data, and innovation. From employing bacteria to fight cancer, to using viruses as microscopic couriers of genetic fixes, biotherapeutics are rewriting the rules of how we heal—turning nature’s own tools into our most potent allies.

This essay aims to explore what precision biotherapeutics means, why it is more effective than it’s conventional counterpart, and how its use and development can influence individual outcomes and improve India’s healthcare landscape.

Precision biotherapeutics refers to highly targeted therapies that are developed using biological products, often tailored to specific subtypes of diseases. These products can include recombinant proteins and hormones, monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), cytokines, growth factors, gene therapy products, vaccines, cell-based products, and stem cell therapies. These are considered the most rapidly growing drug classes in immunology, neurology, oncology, and other hereditary diseases.

Precision Oncology has shown the most promise in recent years. For example, many women with HER2-positive breast cancer, a type characterized with overexpression of HER2 protein will get neoadjuvant chemotherapy first, and up to 50% of these patients do not benefit from the treatment. Such patients respond significantly to trastuzumab (Herceptin®), a monoclonal antibody that targets HER2. Two complex molecular diagnostic tests, Oncotype DX® and MammaPrint,® are used to identify the patients who will benefit from receiving Herceptin® and other drugs that target HER2, such as Tykerb® (lapatinib). Such are the variety of advanced therapeutics developed to upgrade our survival outcomes and provide quality healthcare.

However, the widespread application of these targeted therapies in a developing country, such as India, is debatable due to a lack of financial support for the development of new therapies and an insufficient amount of genomic data to properly classify the population, i.e. India has 20% of the global population but represents only 1% of it’s existing genetic data. Other concerns include privacy issues and the data possibly being used for nefarious purposes. Fortunately, this issue is not necessarily unique to healthcare settings, whether current or future, as it has plagued many other industries including the banking, marketing, and social media industries. Strategies exploited in these other industries could be used in healthcare settings as well.

It’s clear that tailored treatment plans are vital to providing high-quality care. While there are some strong counterarguments, such as the claim that it is a pricey alternative and requires a considerable amount of time, equipments, and trained professionals, it remains clear that the merits of it’s implementation far outweigh the potential downsides. Moving forward, the utilization of precision biotherapeutics should be a priority for all stakeholders involved, as it promises a better future for every patient. The focus should now shift towards how best to integrate such customised treatments more effectively into society.

Josephine O.

University/College name : Siksha O'Anusandhan (SOA) University