Precision medicine is a much-needed tool in the current day world to aid in various scenarios, especially in cancer treatment. There is a myriad of diseases that span and spread across the entire globe covertly existing with the human race. Among such diseases that occur, cancer is one of the irrefutable fatal illnesses which affects a person; both physically and psychologically. Cancer is defined as a condition where a particular system or biological cell in the human body forfeits its regular defined blueprint and goes haywire in its function and existence. Such cells multiply rapidly, where they also influence the neighboring normal cells into cancer cells. Precision medicine helps in a much better way, where they target the cancerous cells and try to modify their survivability or alert the natural defense cells to target the cancer cells and kill them. However, with the advancement of science and technology great progress has been made in the fight against cancer.
Chemotherapy, radiation therapy, antibody therapy are some of the examples of great advancements which have suitably increased the survival rate in cancer patients. Nevertheless, the aforementioned therapies, apart from radiation therapy aren’t targeted therapies and affect even the normal system in the body. The therapies also include serious side effects. This calls for the need for precision medicine in cancer treatment, which is targeted and more likely to not cause any adverse effects in the patient. Let us see a few examples of genetic engineering aided precision medicine involved in cancer therapy. CAR T-Cell or Chimeric antigen receptor therapy is where the T-cells (one of the natural defense cells in the body) are genetically altered and induced to target and attack the cancer cells. CRISPR therapy; a rapidly developing method worldwide, is an advanced gene-editing therapy that can target and knick the cancer-causing gene. GVAX is a gene vaccine that targets and kills cancer cells with the help of natural defense cells, by stimulating them to target cancer cells. ONYX-015 is anti-cancer viral therapy that uses viruses to invade and kill cancerous cells, where the virus is genetically enhanced to not target normal cells. TNFerade is an anti-cancer immunotherapeutic where it helps to combat tumors with the help of radiation-assisted therapy.
The majority of the genetic engineering involved therapies hold the biggest advantage of not having any side effects and the patients undergoing such treatments are devoid of any big discomfort or pain as seen in other cancer therapies. Targeting cancer via precision medicine in cancer treatment helps to not only improve cancer treatment but also significantly improves the quality of life for the patient. With the aid of current technology and advancements, cancer treatment using precision medicine will improve much greater than what it is today and reach a much more significant amount of the population in no time.