DNA Technology
And Its Use In Individualizing Medicine
Cole Peterson's Breadcrumb Trail
1. This search brought me to the site: http://www.coriell.org/personalized-medicine/dna-genes-and-snps. This site was useful for learning about DNA and the groups working with DNA, but it didn't talk about how DNA is used to personalize medicine. I changed my search box to DNA+personalized+medicine+specific+diseases
2. This led me to the site: http://newsinhealth.nih.gov/issue/dec2013/feature1. On this site, I found more information about what I was looking for. It talked about how doctors could look at peoples DNA to determine the dosage amounts for medicine or if there will be side effects to the medicine. This science is called pharmacogenomics. This is very close to what I want to research, but I want to find a specific disease that exemplifies personalized DNA. I changed my search box to diseases+that+use+personalized+medicine.
3.This led me to the site:http://mayoresearch.mayo.edu/center-for-individualized-medicine/personalized-medicine.asp. On this site, I found a patient story about how doctors at the mayo clinic are using pharmacogenomics to personalize treatments to patients with cancer.
I decided to focus my research on how pharmacogenomics are used to personalize treatments for cancer patients.
Individualized Treatments for Cancer Patients
1. Determining the chances that a person will develop cancer and selecting screening strategies to lower the risk.
2. Matching patients with treatments that are more likely to be effective and cause fewer side effects.
3. Predicting the risk of recurrence.
Doctors are currently applying personalized treatment in active treatment plans, but they are also using it as part of a clinical trial. These trials are used on people with the disease and help research the topic even further.