Moving Forward Precision Medicine in Psychiatry

BELFORTE, JUAN EMILIO

BIOLOGICAL PSYCHIATRY

ELSEVIER SCIENCE INC

Año: 2023 vol. 94 p. 607 - 608

0006-3223

Precision medicine has made significant advancements in certain fields of medicine, particularly in hematology, immunology, and oncology ( 1 ). Biomarker-directed immunotherapy has become the gold standard for lung cancer treatment, and each year new molecular targets and associated treatments are being identified ( 2 ). This approach has achieved successful outcomes in areas where molecular diagnostics were associated with specific therapies (e.g., BRAF V600 mutation and BRAF inhibitors for melanoma, BRCA1/2 mutation with PARP inhibitors for ovarian and breast cancer) or when a biomarker has allowed for the subclassification of patients into treatment-responsive subgroups (e.g., PD-L1 non–small cell lung cancer) ( 3 , 4 ). The progress in precision medicine has been significantly leveraged by the development of large-scale open access biologic databases like The Cancer Genome Atlas program (available at https://www.cancer.gov/tcga) and the reduction in costs associated with patient characterization methods like proteomics, metabolomics, and genomics ( 5 ). The automation and cost reduction of new technologies focused on precise molecular diagnostics offer promising prospects for further advancements in these areas. For example, equipment for automated multiplexed immunohistochemistry/in situ hybridization assessment of molecular and immune profiling is now commercially available as standalone platforms. While oncology has experienced the greatest impact from precision medicine, examples of this approach can also be found in other disciplines, including cardiology ( 6 ) and endocrinology ( 7 ).