Our cells adopt developmental pathways to form a functional, stable body, during which they acquire complex roles in tissues and organs. But when they deviate from their safe path, they accumulate changes that remain undetected before symptoms emerge, leading to illness. Medical care is often invasive, costly, and inefficient at this stage. This is where interceptive medicine plays an important role. Healthcare through interceptive medicine means early detection of disease and treatment before symptoms are seen. Catching diseases sooner is becoming more and more possible, and early treatment provides the potential for slowing or even stopping the progression of an individual’s disease for certain cases and can be the first way to seek a cure.
We now have the tools to capture individual cells’ molecular structure and identify the presence of disease or resistance to therapy much earlier. In combination with artificial intelligence and personalized disease models, using breakthrough single-cell and imaging technology will allow us not only to predict disease onset sooner but also to select the most appropriate therapies for individual patients, which change a person’s healthcare experience through interceptive medicine. It would greatly boost the outlook for many patients and has the ability to save billions of disease-related costs by targeting disease-causing cells to intercept diseases before irreparable damage occurs.
Transformation in healthcare through interceptive medicine will occur when there will be advancements in these four technological medical fields:
- The first is an enormous challenge, designing AI or machine learning technologies that can incorporate spatial multi-omics, imaging, and other data from current databases shared across various countries.
- Secondly, the project needs a detailed view of the study of genomes, proteomes, lipidomes, transcriptomes, epigenomes, metabolomes, and more that will show the variety of subtypes and states of cells and their surrounding environment in order to reveal essential information on changes in disease-related cell composition.
- Advances in CRISPR-Cas9 are also required to make gene editing simpler and safer for disease prevention or treatment.
- Personalized organoids would also be central to the project. An organoid from a person mimicking the person’s colon can be used to experiment with the person, allowing full customization of treatments and reaction tests without exposing the patient to potentially toxic side effects.
With the aid of these technological advances, we will be able to greatly improve care for many diseases by introducing interceptive, cell-based medicine. Not only can it help patients across the globe lead longer, healthier lives, but it will also have an economic effect as billions of dollars are saved.
