Personalized medicine and blood disorders

Abstract

Personalized medicine has been using genomics approaches to elucidate the etiology of a disease as well as to personalize the management for patients of a particular disease based on that individual's genetic features. It benefits patients across a multitude of therapeutic areas and advancements are particularly evident in hematology/oncology. The importance of genomics discoveries and development in nonmalignant blood disorders generally goes unrecognized, but it becomes critical now due to the global disease burden and a high mortality. This paper focuses on the exploration of personalized medicine applications in hemoglobin diseases, and thrombotic and bleeding disorders. It discusses the challenges which slow down the implementation as well. The available data suggest that the ability to understand the clinical features of a patient's genetic profile and the knowledge of disease mechanisms are the keys to facilitate new diagnosis, new therapies, new prescriptions and better healthcare.