Promise of personalized omics to precision medicine

Wiley Interdiscip Rev Syst Biol Med. 2013 Jan-Feb;5(1):73-82. doi: 10.1002/wsbm.1198. Epub 2012 Nov 26.

Abstract

The rapid development of high-throughput technologies and computational frameworks enables the examination of biological systems in unprecedented detail. The ability to study biological phenomena at omics levels in turn is expected to lead to significant advances in personalized and precision medicine. Patients can be treated according to their own molecular characteristics. Individual omes as well as the integrated profiles of multiple omes, such as the genome, the epigenome, the transcriptome, the proteome, the metabolome, the antibodyome, and other omics information are expected to be valuable for health monitoring, preventative measures, and precision medicine. Moreover, omics technologies have the potential to transform medicine from traditional symptom-oriented diagnosis and treatment of diseases toward disease prevention and early diagnostics. We discuss here the advances and challenges in systems biology-powered personalized medicine at its current stage, as well as a prospective view of future personalized health care at the end of this review.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Review

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Chromosome Mapping / trends*
  • Drug Discovery / trends*
  • Genome-Wide Association Study / trends*
  • Humans
  • Pharmacogenetics / trends*
  • Precision Medicine / trends*