Applying state-of-the-art technologies, we try to understand diseases in an to date unconceivable accurateness to offer our patients a therapy tailored to their specific need.
Platform 1 is part of the Excellence Strategy of the University of Tübingen.
The platforms focus is the development and translation of the so called “personalized medicine” (PM). This idea of modern medicine plays a key role in all medical discipline, both in basic research and medical care. To facilitate the focus area of drug discovery and drug development the Tübingen Center for Academic Drug Discovery (TüCADD) was etablished. The implementation of the PM approaches is achieved by the Center for Personalised Medicine (ZPM), that is located at the university hospital Tübingen.
The term ‘personalised medicine’ has been used for several years to describe a paradigm shift in medicine, leading to improved diagnosis of disease and thereby to more precise therapy with fewer side-effects and better cost-efficiency. Therefore the term ‘personalised medicine’ is associated with the hope for therapeutic innovations for hitherto untreatable, complex diseases such as cancer, dementia, cardiovascular diseases and others. This development is only possible because of the vast progress in exploration of the underlying pathogenesis of these diseases as well as the establishment of new methods to produce and analyse high-throughput data (genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, etc.) and the introduction of new imaging technologies. Based on the molecular profile (genome analysis, protein analysis, metabolomic characteristics, biological markers, …) the prediction of the course of disease as well as the efficiency of the drug and the probability of side-effects can be more precise. The identification of new targets for treatment strategies is kind of side-product by this data and information driven approach and can be used for academic drug development.
Regarding the fact, that two persons differ not only in more than 6 Mio. nucleotides, but also in their environment and lifestyle and their diet, it’s not a wonder, that not always for every patient with the same disease the same drug can be effective. Each patient has to be considered as an individual and not as a statistical mean value.
Therefore the overall goal of PM is to find the appropriate therapy at the best point in time with the optimal dosage for each single person.
