Final Essay

Medicine has come a long way from taking roots and plants and making vaccines and medication. Although most medicine is beneficial, some do not help or fight diseases in certain people’s bodies. Precision Medicine is a modern phenomenon that has recently become a big deal amongst many doctors. Patients who have tried chemotherapy, for example, to disrupt the spread of cancer realize this treatment will not work, and they need a doctor to create personalized medicine to try to cure their disease a different way. Precision medicine not only personalizes the disease for the patient, it is kept and can be used to help other patients who are “immune” to chemotherapy. The future of precision medicine is full of new discoveries that will only benefit

This field of work is called precision oncology. The NCI stated that around $215 million had been invested in the year 2016 to help use precision medicine to cure cancer (NCI and the precision medicine initiative® [Internet]). Since 2014 many different approaches have been taken to address oncology as a whole, for example; many genetically targeted therapies have been approved and are available to many cancer patients and PMI® plans on having even more available in the future. NCI is spotlighting its PMI® actions in four extensive categories. The first category is Expanding Precision Medicine Clinical Trials which, in summary, is expanding the number of therapies available to patients who need them. Researchers have recently discovered that therapies can be created and personalized based on the genetic alterations inside the certain patient. Beneath PMI®, NCI is developing a new trial called NCI-MATCH. This is where a person who is suffering from cancer will be appointed to a specific therapy based on any abnormalities in their tumors. NCI-MATCH not only focuses on the most common kinds of cancer, but it also takes in 25% of rare cancers in adults. The trial includes 1,000 patients that will be assigned to an array of small phase II treatments/trials. These trials will include around 30 people receiving the same therapy, but these groups are based on the kind of abnormality of their cancer. Each of the phase II treatments will include between 20-25 drugs that are specified for the abnormality. The outlook of this trial is eventually it will go national and more than 2,000 people can receive treatment all around the United States. The technology used is very advanced and can determine the abnormality in less than 2 weeks. Laboratories are run by researchers who are very knowledgeable about this certain field. Regarding the