Cell & Tissue Science

Personalized Medicine

The pharmaceutical industry faces various challenges within the development of novel compounds. Phase II clinical trial success rates are at a five-year low of 22, and therefore the average range of preclinical programs required to produce one new drug has increased from 12 to 30 between 2007 and 2012 alone. As a result, the average new drug needs over $1.8 billion dollars and 12 years from the time of discovery to commercial launch. To counteract these high attrition rates and increased prices, drug developers need to be able to predict and identify potential efficacy and issues of safety as early as possible throughout the drug discovery process. Doing so can change a lot of attention to be focused on programs with best possibilities of progressing through end-stage clinical trials instead of expensive failures.

Since the invention of patient specific drug discovery or personal medicines. Personalized medicine, also termed as precision medicine, could be a medical procedure that separates patients into completely different groups—with medical decisions, practices, interventions and/or product being tailored to the individual patient based on their predicted response or risk of disease.