Prescription drugs and their dosages may be standardized, but not every patient reacts to a medicine in the same way. The personal genetic characteristics of individuals and populations can explain why a specific prescription successfully treats one patient and not another, so medical researchers are adopting the new approach called “personalized medicine” and a Tel Aviv University lab is leading the way.
Dr. Noam Shomron of Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine is developing a new method for the advancement of personalized medicine, an expanding area of research that optimizes individual patient care.
With a deep sequencer, a machine that reads the human genome and its expression, Dr. Shomron is looking at how the genetic expression of small regulatory genes, called microRNAs, affects the way a patient reacts to medication. This could mean fewer deaths from adverse drug effects and novel and safe uses for existing medications.
Dr. Shomron hopes to create a map of gene regulatory pathways – how a person’s genes react to a drug – and how this affects a person’s ability to metabolize different drugs. Some of his recent findings were detailed the journal Pharmacogenomics.
Source: George Hunka
American Friends of Tel Aviv University