Tanaka Hiroshi
School of Biomedical Sciences, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Tokyo, Japan.
Stud Health Technol Inform. 2008;134:47-58.
A new perspective for personalized care which genomics and bioinformatics cooperatively open was described, with emphasis on promising possibilities which "genome/omics-based personalized care" is thought to bring about. In doing so, we took it into consideration that, along the rapid progress of the genome/omics and bioinformatics, the contents of "genome/omics-based personalized care" have evolved, mainly through three generations. The first generation is personalized care based on (1) the polymorphism of the "germline" genome sequences, such as personalized medication depending on the individual genetic differences concerning the pharmacodynamics/phamarcokinetics or estimation of genotype relative risk for individual's disease occurrence, the second generation is that based on (2) the information pattern of vast amount of omics data of diseased "somatic" cell, which brings about detailed classification, early diagnosis and prognosis of the disease, and the third generation is that based on (3) the system level understanding of complex diseases which enables wholistic comprehension of the mechanism of diseases, with special reference to disease pathway.