Precision medicine: The future in diabetes care?

Personalized medicine aims at better targeting therapeutic intervention to the individual to maximize benefit and minimize harm. Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is a heterogeneous disease from a genetic, pathophysiological and clinical point of view. Thus, the response to any antidiabetic medication may considerably vary between individuals. Numerous glucose-lowering agents, with different mechanisms of action, have been developed, a diversified armamentarium that offers the possibility of a patient-centred therapeutic approach. In the current clinical practice, a personalized approach is only based upon phenotype, taking into account patient and disease individual characteristics. If this approach may help increase both efficacy and safety outcomes, there remains considerable room for improvement. In recent years, many efforts were taken to identify genetic and genotype SNP's (Single Nucleotide Polymorphism's) variants that influence the pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, and ultimately the therapeutic response of oral glucose-lowering drugs. This approach mainly concerns metformin, sulphonylureas, meglitinides and thiazolidinediones, with only scarce data concerning gliptins and gliflozins yet. However, the contribution of pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics to personalized therapy still needs to mature greatly before routine clinical implementation is possible. This review discusses both opportunities and challenges of precision medicine and how this new paradigm may lead to a better individualized treatment of T2D.