Genomics Is Changing Health: The Good and Bad of Custom Medicine
NEW YORK, United States – August 6, 2025: Custom medicine is taking off in health care, all because of big steps in genomics. Scientists are using your genes to go past the ‘one-size-fits-all’ way to find, stop, and care for sicknesses. DNA sequencing is now cheap, and artificial intelligence is getting smarter, so treatments can be made just for you. It could mean drugs work better and have fewer bad side effects for all sorts of illnesses, like cancer and long-term problems.
The Start of Custom Treatments
Custom medicine is a way to give care that uses your genes, what’s around you, and how you live to make health choices. We can now read and learn from the human genome. By knowing about gene changes, doctors can guess if you might get a disease. They can pick the best drugs for you and know how much to give you.
How medicine is done is really changing. Instead of giving everyone the same pill, treatments are picked by looking at your genes. This makes sure you get what will likely work best for you. Plus, it keeps you from taking drugs that won’t help and could hurt you.
Genes are the key.
Cutting the price of gene reading has been a big deal. Reading the first human genome took billions of dollars and over ten years. Now, it costs just a few hundred dollars and happens in days. Because it’s so easy, we can gather tons of gene info. This helps us find out new stuff and use it.
Tech like next-generation sequencing (NGS) can look at millions of DNA pieces at once. Plus, we can look at genomics with proteomics, transcriptomics, and metabolomics to get a full view and make better treatment plans.
Custom Treatments Are Helping with Cancer
Cancer care shows custom medicine really works. Before, treatments were based on where the cancer started, like breast or lung cancer. But genomics showed that cancers in body parts might have the same gene change. Also, two cancers in the same spot might have very different genes.
Because we get this, we are making targeted treatments. For example, some lung cancer patients with certain EGFR gene mess-ups do great with tyrosine kinase inhibitors. Treatments for melanoma and breast cancer are now picked by checking for things like the BRAF and HER2 genes. Getting treatment based on these types of markers has changed cancer care, helping people live longer and feel better.
The Right Drug, The Right Amount
Pharmacogenomics checks how your genes change how you react to drugs. It fixes a big problem in medicine: having to guess which drugs work. Sometimes, it takes trying some options to find one that works and doesn’t make you sick.
Now, DNA tests can guess how you’ll break down a drug. For example, how well warfarin, a common blood thinner, works is affected by the CYP2C9 and VKORC1 genes. Knowing your genes helps doctors give you the right amount of medicine from the start. This stops dangerous side effects like bleeding or forming a clot. This custom way is being used for drugs that help with heart problems, mental health, and long-lasting pain. It makes treatment safer and better.
What are the rules, and should we worry?
Even though custom medicine brings good stuff, it also brings up tough questions about what’s right and wrong. Keeping gene info private and safe is the top worry. Lots of gene data is gathered and kept, so how do we stop bosses, insurance companies, or other people from using it the wrong way?
The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) gives some cover, but it’s not perfect. It’s also hard to get patients to say yes to sharing their gene info because it can be hard to get what it really means.
How It Hits Money and Business
Custom medicine is changing the drug and biotech businesses. Making drugs can now be faster and cheaper because companies can focus on drugs for groups of people that will likely do well. This lowers the cost and failure rates of making drugs.
But custom treatments and tests are pricey. So, it can be hard to get them to everyone. Some treatments cost too much. This makes it so those who have money can get the newest treatments. It’s up to the people in charge and health systems to find a fix so everyone can get these treatments.
Health Care that Looks Ahead
The future of custom medicine is about health care that looks ahead, not just fixing problems. Gene checks will get normal, so we can guess if you might get certain problems before they start. This can help you make changes to how you live that can stop the problem altogether.
Artificial intelligence (AI) will also be a big part of this. Machine learning is checking gene data to guess sicknesses better than people can. AI will help doctors use gene info to make treatment choices.
From Dream to Reality
Thanks to genomics, custom medicine is here. It’s changing health care. Cost, rules, and worries are still real, but this type of individualized health care promises that medicine is about you, your health, and your life.
