Personalized Medicine
- Mike McMullen
- Mar 10, 2025
- 2 min read
I came across an interesting 3 page article published in the Journal Nature back in 2015 calling for personalized precision medicine.
The article "Personalized Medicine: Time for One-Person Trials" by Nicholas J. Schork discusses the limitations of traditional clinical trials and advocates for a shift toward precision medicine, particularly through N-of-1 trials.
In the article, Schork argues that widespread adoption of N-of-1 trials could lead to more effective treatments, cost savings, and a more patient-centered approach to medicine.
I tried to make the longest sentence possible to summarize the central idea. Here it goes:
As opposed to the current clinical trial paradigm that focus on large population averages rather than individual responses and leads to widely used drugs that are ineffective for the majority of patients due to genetic and environmental variability, precision medicine aims to tailor treatments to individuals based on genetic, biochemical, and lifestyle factors and to study the effects of treatments on a single patient over time, which could improve treatment efficacy by identifying responders and non-responders more accurately which will be empowered by emerging technologies such as wearable health devices and genomic analysis that are making this type of personalized medicine more feasible.
I think that is the longest sentence I have ever written.
Some highlights from the piece:
"A key component will be transforming everyday clinical care into solid N-of-1 trials."
"Key to making precision medicine mainstream is the ongoing shift in the relationship between patients and physicians. A major advantage of the N-of-1 approach over classical trials is that patients are no longer guinea pigs, whose involvement in a study may help only future generations. In N-of-1 trials, the effectiveness of different treatments are vetted for the actual participants."
Please enjoy the article attached and linked below.
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