Precision Biotherapeutics- The craft of making medicine a tailor-made custom-fit

The science that entails art just like a ‘garment industry ’, is hard to ponder. The good news is that this specific advancement has come to the limelight, which rejects the “ One -size-fits-all” criteria of making medicines. This emerging field is now out of its ‘latent stage ’ and rapidly becoming the savior of the advanced healthcare era. It employs an individual’s own genetic and molecular make-up and preparing a formulation accordingly, not barring the lifestyle choices one makes.

The genome is a unique homeland of signatures that vary from person to person, not excluding the twins. This creativity is the basis for the treatment options of precision medicine. When we visit a shoestore, do we not measure our feet size first and then consider buying it? The same rule should be applied even for treatment regimes, instead of the conventional old-school ideology. To measure the foot size first, we are pertaining to understanding an individual’s own genetic and molecular signatures to make a customized therapy that contributes to better health outcomes and survival rates. Researchers are acknowledging this fact and are directing the facts of this “ naive but smart” technology to benchside.

Precision medicine is now gaining momentum in all the biological fields per se, for now, there is an option for physicians to selectively identify a mutation specific to the patient that enables tailor-made, efficient therapy with less collateral damage. This field is expanding to a huge cohort-based study of a subpopulation that has transformation-based evidential aspects. Cancer therapeutics, amongst others, is one of the wings of precision medicine and therapy. Actively targeted systems achieve higher payload deposition via nanoparticles that are easily biodegradable and have enhanced biodistribution. These nanoparticles are often decorated or coated with certain antibodies that can bind to receptors present in cancer cells, eg: folate-targeted polymeric nanoparticles that release chemotherapeutic agents directly to the tumor cells, without having any off-target effects. Numerous other instances are available that employ precision biology for reversing chemoresistance and tumor progression. Apart from these, if one has a very specific genetic mutation in tumor cells (Estrogen-related receptor-γ-for liver cancer), doctors can now use targeted therapies that block the specific molecules causing the cells to behave uncontrollably.

Advanced strategies like Gene therapy, are the most challenging of all, yet fruitful with long-lasting cures for rare genetic diseases like cystic fibrosis, hemophilia, and muscular dystrophy. The answer lies in the address of the genetic issues at the grassroot level and subsequent identification of novel signatures that are manifesting the physiological complications. On the other hand, mRNA-based therapies opened newer avenues with RNAi ( RNA interference ) technology and mRNA vaccines that extend the applications to not only infectious biology but also to cancer and neurodegenerative disorders.

Despite this humungous triumph, precision biotherapy is facing significant challenges like high cost of maintenance for personalized treatment, the need for diagnostic techniques for routine use, and ethical issues for the use of private data like the genetic repository. However, there is always a catch. These issues can be combated by Artificial intelligence (AI) based simulation and modeling of patients ’ data, which can be easily translated to molecular diagnosis settings.

Precision medicine is not just any medical advancement, it is a revolution of advanced healthcare and can solve once unanswered queries, thus picking up the pace for modern translational science- A real eureka moment …

Pratigyan Dash

University/College name : INSTITUTE OF LIFE SCIENCES