A case study of human genome-supported changes in the understanding of diseases
Personalized cancer-treatment
To defeat cancer there are hundreds of diffrent medicaments, which can be applied in various doses and ingestion-frequences. The aim is to identify the most effective medication with the slightest byeffect(s) to heal the patient. It is a very complex and time-consuming challange for the oncologists to find the matching treatment-strategy for the patient. Here genome-sequencing can help: Through compare the genome data of cancer-cells with the data of a healthy cell (naturally from the same patient) and the data of other patients (the DNA-data of both, healthy and cancer cell, is two terabytes big, that means three billion datapoints), oncologists can now work more efficient. Because it's impossible to regard all factors manual, geneticists (enterprise MolecularHealth) work together with computer scientists (enterprise SAP). An application should help oncologists by comparing the DNA-data with the help of a big database. "This in turn means that medics such as oncologists will have more time for their core duty – looking after their patients."
Relevance of the complete human genome
In this case, like in the most cases, not the whole genome is important for the diagnostic / treatment. Relevant are especially the genes that differentiate in healthy and defective cells, because they are responsible for the malformation of the affected cells.
Change of survival of the patient (my opinion)
I guess the probability to improve the survival-chance of a cancer-patient through aply genome-sequencing, especially in combination with clever softwares, is really big. In short time this method shows the diffrences between the healthy and the cancer-genome. That shortens the diagnosis and the treatment-plans significant.
Once there will be a mature software with a big (DNA-)database of many cancer-patients. If then a scanned genome of a cancer-patient matches with the data of a succesfully cured former patient, a good treatment is instantly available. That doesn't mean, that it must be right the very best treatment for this patient, but it supplies the oncologists a very good initial situation and spares them a lot of time, that raises in turn the survival-probability of the patient.
http://www.sap-investor.com/en/2012/quarter-4/sap-hana/fighting-cancer-with-sap-hana.html
Hi Sven
AntwortenLöschenYour Blog sounds promising and positive, concerning the future of the cancer treatment. I also think it will be a big step for oncologists and especially for the patients, if personalized medicine is applicable. But I guess it still needs quite a time until it is ready, because it is difficult to understand carcinogenesis. Hence, I think your statement is a litle bit too optimistic, and it might be because of the article you chose, which is partly from a software company. Therefore their interest might be more to sell their Software than to heal cancer.
Nevertheless, you've done nice work.
Greetings, Tobi
Hi Sven!
AntwortenLöschenThe present facts of your selected sample illustrate very clearly that informatic technology plays a significant, unmistakable role fighting « disorders ». And as the definition of this term « disorder » implies, mutation in gene sequences can be understood as a form of modification in order and therefore are coresponsible (or causative ?) for various diseases.
Recent years may have seen applied aspects take an important role in basic medical research for a breakdown of the outcome and results generated from gene sequencing. Nevertheless, scientists are still playing at the edges, scratching the surface and a great deal remains to be done. We also have to ensure that we don`t lose sight of other relevant influencing environmental factors and give for example the influence of irradiation, chemicals and also biological agents and toxins more prominence in the health sector.
Regards, Carmen
Hi Sven
AntwortenLöschenI like your blog, it's well written and easy to understand. Beside all the improvements that need to be done on the medical level there will also be a need for improvement in the informatics sector.
I think that one of the biggest problems could be the handling of such amouts of data. As you've written a single genome has 2 Terabyte and since comparing one genome with just one another one will not be enough to statistically determine whether there are significant differences, you'd probably need to compare a single genome with around 100 others. That would mean that you'd need to access the data of these 100 genomes which are 200 terabytes. In the ZHAW WLAN, which admittedly isn't the fastest (~2.5mbyte/second) it would take about 925 days or 2.5 years to download that amout of data. Sure this is only partly realistic, since there are certainly easier ways to acces the data than from a "cloud", but still the staggering amout of data that would be needed and used will certainly also be a problem for informatic and network engineers.
Regards,
Luca
Hey Luca
LöschenI wanted to comment on such amounts of data next week...
Theo
Hi Sven
AntwortenLöschenGreat job, and I must say that the direction you took is unconventional, but within the assignment.
I was a bit disappointed that you did not take a medically based publication where they took (part of) the genome to diagnose cancer. These are available, and were actually my aim. Well, what you did is also good, and the comments are showing that you triggered some reaction.
I am interested how you and the others will set up the panel discussion.
Regards
Theo