Editorial
Chemistry and personalized medicine – the research and development future of Europe
Gunars Duburs
; Latvian Institute of Organic Synthesis, Laboratory of Membrane Active Compounds, Riga, Latvia
Denis Neibecker
; CNRS Laboratoire de Chimie de Coordination, Toulouse, France
Neven Žarković
; Laboratory for Oxidative Stress, Ruđer Bošković Institute, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Personalized medicine may represent a dramatic change
of paradigm in the medium-term future. For a chemist,
personalized medicine means the definition and understanding
of any disease on molecular level for each individual
or group of individuals (personalized diagnosis) ideally
leading to the design of a drug that efficiently counteracts
or prevents any molecular dysfunction, ie, a personalized
drug without side effects.
The interdisciplinary research required for personalized
medicine should overcome a myriad of obstacles not the
least being to find specific biomarkers and targets for each
individual or group of individuals suffering from a given
disease. Chemists enter then into action and will model/
design drugs and drug delivery pathways for a personalized
therapy. They will either tap into the numerous drugs
candidates, which were abandoned at some stage of clinical
trials, or synthesize new drugs, mainly those “small molecules”
mimicking the activity of natural products.
This view has obvious economic, ethical, and social implications,
beyond scientific challenges. All stakeholders will
have to take them into account. Policy makers will have to
examine all disciplines of regulatory science among which
the thorny economics (cost-benefit analysis of specific research
and development projects) are of paramount importance
and critical to the development of personalized
medicine.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
85765
URI
Publication date:
15.8.2012.
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