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WCMC-Q holds event on personalised medicine

DOHA: Weill Cornell Medical College-Qatar (WCMC-Q) hosted an event for the public to create awareness about a concept that is starting to transform the field of health care, personalised medicine.

Dr Lotfi Chouchane, professor of genetic medicine and assistant dean for basic science at WCMC-Q, broke the complex topic of genetic research down for the audience and shared perspectives and insights born from his research into breast cancer and other conditions with understood genetic components.

"This is to let the community know that we are entering a new era where the genome will be an important factor in treating disease," Dr Chouchane said.

"We have already seen many cases where this approach is effective -- in the field of breast cancer therapeutics in particular."

Dr Chouchane shared basic information about human genetics, laying the groundwork for understanding personalized medicine. For example, he explained that one can take two completely different people and even with all of their differences, 99.9 percent of their genes are identical.

"So only less than one percent of our genes are responsible for all of the differences you see among humans," he explained.

"Genetic diversity is examined through comparison of single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, among people -- places where their genetic information does not match. We are developing the know-how and technology to identify SNPs that correlate to a range of clinical considerations, including drug toxicity, response to treatment and disease prediction."

Dr Chouchane explained that personalised medicine is primarily focused on prevention and, if illness takes over, methods to reduce toxic effects of and maximum response to treatment. Some diseases, like breast cancer and Phenylketonuria -- a genetic condition causing the production of a toxic level of phenylalanine from infancy--already have understood links to genetic information.

"The use of personalized medicine is encouraged in cancer treatment and pediatrics, where we can test therapies for their efficacy and toxicity and adjust environmental elements to reduce toxicity at an early age, respectively," Dr Chouchane explained.

In his presentation, Dr Chouchane explored two solid examples of ways that personalised medicine is already being applied -- in predicting the effects of the anticoagulant drug Warfarin and predicting the likelihood that a woman will develop breast cancer.

He explored the power of genetics as a tool to foretell outcomes and the implications of this power on the doctor-patient relationship.

© The Peninsula 2011