Precision Medicine News and Research

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Phenotypic personalized medicine can identify a person's optimal drug, dose combinations

For decades, doctors and scientists have predicted that personalized medicine — tailoring drug doses and combinations to people's specific diseases and body chemistry — would be the future of health care.

7 Apr 2016

Clinical study shows association between Corus CAD blood test scores and cardiovascular event rates

CardioDx, Inc., a molecular diagnostics company specializing in cardiovascular genomics, announced today results from a genomic substudy of the NHLBI-funded Prospective Multicenter Imaging Study for Evaluation of Chest Pain (PROMISE) trial in nondiabetic patients receiving the Corus CAD blood test.

7 Apr 2016

Pediatric researchers uncover new syndrome that causes intellectual disability

Pediatric researchers, using high-speed DNA sequencing tools, have identified a new syndrome that causes intellectual disability (ID). Drawing on knowledge of the causative gene mutation, the scientists' cell studies suggest that an amino acid supplement may offer a targeted treatment for children with this condition.

5 Apr 2016

Study demonstrates rarity of familial hypercholesterolemia mutations in individuals with high cholesterol

Only a small fraction of people with very high cholesterol can attribute their condition to a genetic mutation related to familial hypercholesterolemia, but individuals with these mutations face a high risk of developing early-onset coronary artery disease, according to research presented at the American College of Cardiology's 65th Annual Scientific Session.

4 Apr 2016

Myriad myRisk Hereditary Cancer test identifies 70% more deleterious mutations than BRCA1/2 testing alone

Myriad Genetics, Inc., a leader in molecular diagnostics and personalized medicine, working in collaboration with researchers from the Harvard Medical School, today announced that the Journal of Clinical Oncology has published a paper showing the frequency of germline mutations in 25 cancer susceptibility genes among patients with breast cancer.

31 Mar 2016

New tool interprets whole-exome tumor sequencing data for better cancer therapies

A University of Colorado Cancer study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association describes a new tool that interprets the raw data of whole exome tumor sequencing and then matches the cancer's unique genetics to FDA-approved targeted treatments.

30 Mar 2016

Researchers develop new technique to study blood vessel inflammation

Nanotechnology has led to better diagnostic techniques and more effective treatments for a variety of illnesses. Tiny devices measuring between 1 and 100 micrometers--one micrometer is equal to one millionth of a meter--enable scientists to observe cell activity and deliver drugs to individual cells--a breakthrough that is on the verge of revolutionizing precision medicine for treatment of diseases such as cancer.

30 Mar 2016

Oregon's new birth control law could improve access to all forms of contraception

Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University, University of Minnesota School of Public Health and George Mason University applaud Oregon's new birth control law which allows women age 18 or older to obtain some methods of hormonal contraception directly from pharmacies, without having to visit a prescribing clinician, yet note how the law could go even further to improve access to all forms of contraception, according to a viewpoint article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association today.

29 Mar 2016

New drug regimens could significantly improve treatment for tuberculosis

Researchers from UCLA and Shanghai Jiao Tong University have made an important step toward a substantially faster and more effective treatment for tuberculosis, which infects some 10 million people and causes 1.5 million deaths each year.

29 Mar 2016

Personalized medicine promises better treatment options for cystic fibrosis patients

For a highly variable disease like cystic fibrosis, personalized medicine promises treatments based on individual factors, down to the molecular level. This promise is especially alluring for the treatment of children with cystic fibrosis, who are at particular risk for complications that could affect them throughout their lives.

25 Mar 2016

Researchers develop metastasis-on-a-chip system to advance cancer investigation, drug discovery

Advances in personalized medicine allow doctors to select the most promising drugs for certain types of malignant tumors.

24 Mar 2016

Mount Sinai Hospital uses M1 LUMI Bead loaded with doxorubicin for liver cancer treatment

An innovative cancer treatment made of luminescent chemotherapy-filled beads injected into tumors through the wrist is now available for patients with inoperable and difficult-to-treat liver cancer.

23 Mar 2016

TGen scientists highlight advantages of using RNA-sequencing in precision medicine

Uncovering the genetic makeup of patients using DNA sequencing has in recent years provided physicians and their patients with a greater understanding of how best to diagnose and treat the diseases that plague humanity. This is the essence of precision medicine.

22 Mar 2016

Researchers use DNA sequencing technology to identify gene variants that affect susceptibility to SLE

Demonstrating the potential of precision medicine, an international study based at UT Southwestern Medical Center used next-generation DNA sequencing technology to identify more than 1,000 gene variants that affect susceptibility to systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).

21 Mar 2016

Genomic profiling could help provide targeted therapies for difficult to treat cancer tumors

Research from Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey examining difficult to treat cancer tumors through genomic profiling shows that tumors with alterations in a signaling pathway responsible for cell regulation may respond to targeted therapy regardless of where the tumor originated in the body.

18 Mar 2016

Scientists find evidence that amyloid fibrils adopt several distinct architectures in human, animal tissues

Formation of amyloid fibrils is a characteristic feature of neurogenerative diseases like Alzheimer's. As published in the journal Angewandte Chemie, German and American scientists have found evidence that these fibrils adopt several distinct three-dimensional architectures in real patient and animal tissues.

16 Mar 2016

AMP disappointed as FDA takes enforcement action against physicians for Zika virus test

The Association for Molecular Pathology, the premier global, professional society serving molecular diagnostics professionals, is very concerned and disappointed to see the FDA taking enforcement action against the physicians at Texas Children's Hospital and Houston Methodist Hospital for their laboratory developed procedure (LDP) for Zika virus, which was designed to identify virus-specific RNA sequences in a large metropolitan area.

16 Mar 2016

Decreased dietary diversity linked to reduced microbiotic richness

Changes in farming practices over the last 50 years have resulted in decreased agro-diversity which, in turn, has resulted in decreased dietary diversity. The significant impact of this change in dietary richness on human health is the topic of an insightful perspective in Molecular Metabolism by Mark Heiman, MicroBiome Therapeutics and Frank Greenway, Pennington Biomedical Research Center

15 Mar 2016

Study on kidney cancer can help pave way toward more effective personalized medicine

Understanding the complexity of cancer is a major goal of the scientific community, and for kidney cancer researchers this goal just got closer. Dr. Chad Creighton, associate professor of medicine and member of the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center Division of Biostatistics at Baylor College of Medicine, led the study that analyzed close to 900 kidney cancers at the molecular level.