Personalized anticoagulant therapy

Following on from the completion of Human Genome Project in 2003 and through continuing advances in genome sequencing technology, scientists hope to be able to predict with exquisite precision, whether or not an individual is developing a disease now, will develop the disease in the future, will respond to treatment or have a serious reaction to a particular drug. Based on this information, physicians will be able to prescribe the right drug to the right patient at the right dosage in the framework of personalized or individualized medicine. As Brooke Byers of Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers states: “Personalized medicine is our chance to revolutionize health care, but it will require a team effort by innovators, entrepreneurs, regulators, payers, and policymakers”. The emergence of pharmacogenomics-guided drug development has led to novel strategies in the management of patients with bleeding and thrombotic disorders, enabling a personalized approach in this area of medicine, which we discuss in this article.