Example Of Genomic Medicine: A Game Changer For The NHS? Essay

This online seminar raised an issue of an importance and cost effectiveness of the genomic medicine for the National Health System. Narrator was primarily focused on cancers, but he added the same method can be used to fight with other diseases like Ebola or influenza. I can agree with most theses. While cancer can be caused by different types of mutations, it is irrational to use one tool to treat all of them. This is not a cost effective strategy too. Like narrators mentioned at the end of the seminar, only about 30% of all patients give a positive response to drugs and other types of standard cancer treatment. Genomic medicine is an expensive technology, but expenses will be more rational because of the development of personalized treatment and improvement of patients’ outcome.
Narrator focused his lection on Natural Killer cells and their activated version that was created in the laboratory from patient’s biomaterial. These structures identify tumor cells by the unique molecular address and kill them. Modernized cells called taNK can be delivered to the tumor in a blood bag. Genomic analysis helps scientists to identify unique molecular addresses of different types of cancer and target taNK on it. This technology provides a basis for an effective personalized treatment for patients. It also can help to reduce side effects and toxicity caused by some chemotherapy and other anti-cancer drugs. The other advantage of the genomic medicine is prevention of super-bugs’ development. While scientists will work with genes, they will decrease needful doses of drugs, and microbes will not develop immunity. However, I think scientists need to undertake more long-term studies, which will define the behavior of modified cells. Genomic medicine already demonstrated its effectiveness, but I remembered news about the accident in the Gulf of Mexico during the seminar. Here the synthetic bacteria, that was created to remove the oil, mutated and started to eat protein-based organisms. Narrators did not say anything about risks that taNK or other modified cells can change their target because of unexpected influence or an inner failure.