About us
Quality
General terms
Contact us

Contacts

Phone: +49 (0)30-74 696 509
Fax: +49 (0)30-367 405 135
E-Mail: info@astrabiotech.de
Imprint

Personalized medicine

The conventional medical approach is having one efficient standard therapy for all patients suffering on a certain disease. Usually, physicians issue a prescription to patients by general pharmaceutical rules. The dosage of a drug for example strongly depends on gender, age and weight of the patient. What this conventional dosage does not take into consideration are the individual prerequisites, for example the metabolic activity. The real efficiency of the prescribed drug and occurrence of side effects cannot be predicted in advance of the therapy.

Thanks to enormous progression in medicine and deeper knowledge of fundamental biological processes and biomarkers connected to certain diseases, the diagnosis and therapy can theoretically be adjusted to each individual patient. This new medical approach is called Personalized medicine or stratified medicine. Personalized medicine aims to categorize the patients into medical relevant groups according to specific biomarkers. A specified and improved diagnosis based on molecular biological methods and therapy can be offered to every group. Insertion in groups with high efficiency is also helpful to increase cooperation and goodwill of patient.

In field of pharmacogenetics and oncology Personalized medicine is already used. For some medications it is known that the efficiency strongly depends on several personal conditions that are fixed in the genotype of the patient. In these cases an individual assessment of the therapy by molecular biological examination of the patient is clearly recommendable before its start. Additionally, Personalized medicine helps to adapt the dosage of prescribed drugs by using DNA analytical methods and resulting knowledge of the genotype of the patient. Further, dangerous side effects and unnecessary and stressing treatments will be avoided. However, the knowledge of individual genetics and predisposition is only useful if appropriate medication and therapy are known. Research and development are subsequently linked to progress in Personalized medicine.