Personalized medicine - reality or just an illusion?

18 June 2006

To many, personalized medicine holds the prospect that drug treatment can be tailored to fit the genetic makeup of individual patients - a prospect that is matched by the increasing investment in pharmacogenomics by the biopharmaceutical industry.

However, says the latest edition of Wood Mackenzie's Horizons, which looks at the current and future applications of personalized medicines within the pharmaceutical industry, there are hurdles to overcome. This notes that, with the recent European Medicines Agency (EMEA) approval of Herceptin (trastuzumab) for early-stage breast cancer (Marketletter May 29), this drug is being viewed as the first "pharmacogenomic" or personalized medicine, in one of the most talked about development areas.

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