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The Prospects for “Personalized Medicine” in Drug Development and Drug Therapy
Author(s) -
Woodcock J
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
clinical pharmacology and therapeutics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.941
H-Index - 188
eISSN - 1532-6535
pISSN - 0009-9236
DOI - 10.1038/sj.clpt.6100063
Subject(s) - personalized medicine , clinical pharmacology , drug development , alternative medicine , appeal , medicine , engineering ethics , computer science , psychology , drug , management science , pharmacology , bioinformatics , political science , law , pathology , biology , engineering , economics
There has been much recent discussion about the advent of “personalized medicine,” but controversy exists over its exact definition; how, when, and whether it will be brought about, and what means could be used to measure its attainment. In fact, the concept of “personalized medicine” is a sort of shorthand used to represent the logical next steps in progression of medical science toward greater mechanistic understanding of health, disease, and treatment. This shorthand is attractive to the public because of its intuitive appeal, and irritating to the biomedical community because it glosses over the very real scientific and implementation challenges. This paper evaluates the trajectory and promise of these next steps for the currently problematic states of both drug development and therapy. Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics (2007) 81 , 164–169. doi: 10.1038/sj.clpt.6100063