evotec_Nov23_PanOmicsDriven - 24

The PanHunter Platform
allowing treatment strategies to be deployed before
symptoms appear.
Once disease endotypes have been established,
a precision medicine approach can be taken; that
is, treatments can be personalized to patient
subgroups. In the case of OA, precision medicine
could facilitate the use of regenerative medicine
in certain patient groups. This approach is being
pursued by Ashish Anand, MD, a staff orthopedic
surgeon at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in
Jackson, MS.
In terms of surgical treatment strategies, there
is one particularly challenging group of orthopedic
patients that are currently benefitting from a precision
medicine approach. " These are patients that are
either too young to be considered for conventional
joint replacement surgery or are not keen to have a
procedure done, " Anand points out. " And yet they not
responding to first-stage conservative treatment. "
At the first stage, if exercise and weight loss and/
or painkillers do not help, then injections with
glucocorticoids are often given directly into the
knee to help reduce inflammation and swelling.
Anand, looking for a solution for this challenging
group, found that amniotic tissue, derived from
human placentas, could help with the mitigation of
pain.
In a clinical study of 40 patients treated with
AmnioFix, Anand found that 65% of patients
reported an over 60% improvement in pain as
measured by a pain score, which is considered to be
a significant improvement. The majority of patients
treated with amniotic tissue were also able to
increase their walking distance.
DATA DEMOCRATIZATION AND BLOCKCHAIN
Distributed ledger technologies such as blockchain
have the potential to support precision
medicine in a number of ways, promoting enhanced
privacy and security while also democratizing it,
said Ingrid Vasiliu-Feltes, MD, president of Detect
Genomix, chief quality and innovation officer at
Mednax, and chief ethics and innovation officer
at the Government Blockchain Association. In her
discussion with GEN, Vailiu-Feltes emphasized that
she was sharing her personal professional opinions,
not representing the views of any of the organizations
with which she is affiliated.
Blockchain stores information in " blocks " and
relies on a consensus model, rather than a centralized
authority, to permit the real-time addition
and updating of data. However, data that has been
added to the ledger cannot be removed or edited.
Doing so is prevented by the " chain " in blockchain,
which refers to how blocks accumulate. New blocks
are continually added, in chain-like fashion, to the
originating block, such that any change in previPrecision
medicine is opening up a raft of new
ways of thinking and new ways of diagnosing and
treating disease and maintaining health longer.
However, as precision medicine becomes more
accessible, affordable, and " the norm " in clinical
practice, significant amounts of data will be created
and stored containing vulnerable, private patient
information. It will be critical for this data-driven
approach to be safe, secure, and accessible to individuals
in any society. Could the key to data security
lie in the same blockchain technology that is used
for popular cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and
Ethereum?
24
GENengnews.com
https://www.genengnews.com https://www.genengnews.com
evotec_Nov23_PanOmicsDriven

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