By Carolyn Butchers – 27^th January 2012

As the cost of determining a patient’s genetic code is falling, the possibility that treatment plans for diseases such as cancer could be tailored to patients based on their individual genetic code is becoming more realistic.

A news story on the BBC stated that ‘putting genetic testing at the heart of the NHS could herald a revolution in diagnosing, treating and preventing disease’. One of the current issues with modern healthcare approaches is that the definition of any disease is too broad. For example, breast cancer is always defined by the location of the tumour – in the breast – however many of these cancers are very different from one another on a molecular level. And in order to determine the best treatment plan, it is the molecular level, rather than the physical location, that is important.

Cancers are especially tricky to treat and essentially cure due to the ability of cancer cells to mutate, proliferate, and metastasize, at such great speed. By identifying which genes are active within any given tumour, treatment programmes can be more effectively tailored. This is already the case for a select few treatments, such as the drug Herceptin, which only works if the patient has a mutation that causes the overexpression of HER2 – a protein which regulates cell growth, survival, adhesion, migration and differentiation.

As the field of genetics continues to advance, it is great to see the ‘real world’ implications of such work. However, as with any significant research, there are potential negatives. One of the proposed ideas is for a national centre which could store genetic information about patients who were sequenced. This would allow doctors to have a point of comparison when determining the treatment plan for new patients, although by informing patients of other diseases that they are at high or low risk of could open a can of worms… and law suits when predications turn out to be wrong.

What are your thoughts on the future of genetic testing?

We thought that we should also let you know that Alto Marketing does have a professional interest in this field, as genetic testing is our client OGT’s area of expertise.

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