Individualized medicine tailors treatment to a single patient. The term refers to an individual, truly personalized medicine that strives to treat each patient on the basis of his own individual biology. Individualized medicine represents a further individualization of personalized medicine. While the latter is aimed at a specific group of patients, individualized medicine deals with the individual circumstances of a single person. Thus, individualized medicine goes one step further and can be considered as an increase in personalized medicine. Individualized medicine seeks to derive tailored therapies for individuals by taking into account a person's

genes In biology, the word gene (from , ; "...Wilhelm Johannsen coined the word gene to describe the Mendelian units of heredity..." meaning ''generation'' or ''birth'' or ''gender'') can have several different meanings. The Mendelian gene is a ba ...

as well as the full range of that person's unique nature, including biological, physiological and anatomical information.

Background

Individualized medicine was first mentioned in the literature in 2003 and described the individual drug metabolism in pharmacogenomics. Subsequently, the term was used to improve diagnosis based on genetic differences and physiological information and to better tailor the treatment to the needs of a single patient. More recently, a second context has been introduced that relates to therapeutic approaches that use a person's own cell material to develop a treatment that is unique to the patient from whom the material originated. Examples are

stem-cell therapies Stem-cell therapy is the use of stem cells to treat or prevent a disease or condition. , the only established therapy using stem cells is hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. This usually takes the form of a bone marrow, bone-marrow transpla ...

and cancer vaccines, which are based on individually distinct molecular profiles.

Genome research

Genome In the fields of molecular biology and genetics, a genome is all the genetic information of an organism. It consists of nucleotide sequences of DNA (or RNA in RNA viruses). The nuclear genome includes protein-coding genes and non-coding ge ...

research has led to new resources that allow more accurate diagnosis and disease management to be tailored to each patient. The challenge of health research is to maximize therapeutic efficacy for each patient while minimizing side effects. An individual medicine approach may be required for those patients who cannot be categorized by mainstream personalized medicine or who suffer diseases without effective drug therapies. The widespread use of advanced imaging techniques and high-throughput technologies that allow for the in-depth study of genes, proteins, and metabolites provides a better understanding of the molecular processes involved in the origin and progression of a disease. Along with other information, these data form the basis for the development of new diagnostic technologies and treatment approaches that are customized for each individual patient.

Individualized medicine in oncology

Individualized medicine is playing an increasingly important role, especially in

oncology Oncology is a branch of medicine that deals with the study, treatment, diagnosis and prevention of cancer. A medical professional who practices oncology is an ''oncologist''. The name's etymological origin is the Greek word ὄγκος (''ó ...

, given that cancers can be extremely heterogeneous between individual patients and within the

tumor A neoplasm () is a type of abnormal and excessive growth of tissue. The process that occurs to form or produce a neoplasm is called neoplasia. The growth of a neoplasm is uncoordinated with that of the normal surrounding tissue, and persists ...

itself. For example,

individualized cancer immunotherapy Individualized cancer immunotherapy, also referred to as individualized immuno-oncology, is a novel concept for therapeutic cancer vaccines that are truly personalized to a single individual. The human immune system is generally able to recognize ...

with the production of

vaccines A vaccine is a biological preparation that provides active acquired immunity The adaptive immune system, also known as the acquired immune system, is a subsystem of the immune system that is composed of specialized, systemic cells and pro ...

tailored to match a person's individual constellation of cancer

mutations In biology, a mutation is an alteration in the nucleic acid sequence of the genome of an organism, virus, or extrachromosomal DNA. Viral genomes contain either DNA or RNA. Mutations result from errors during DNA or viral replication, mi ...

, the mutanome, has become a new field of research. Each patient has an individual mutational signature, and only a very small portion of the mutations are shared between patients. The aim of individualized medicine is to optimize the treatment strategy for a single patient using genetic information as well as molecular and cellular analyzes.

References

{{Reflist Medical terminology