Genomics and transcriptomics: The powerful technologies in precision medicine

Abstract

In a clinical trial, people with the same disease can show different responses after treatment with the same drug and exactly under the same conditions. Some of them may improve, some may not show any response, and occasionally side effects may be observed. In other words, people with the same disease process under the same therapeutic conditions may have different responses. Today, some diseases are resistant to conventional (standard) treatment procedures. Why do people with the same disease show different responses to the treatment with the same drug? This is primarily due to differences in molecular pathways (especially genetic variations) associated with the disease. On the other hand, designing and delivery of a new drug is a time-consuming and costly process, so any mistake in any stage of this process can have irreparable consequences for pharmaceutical companies and con-sumer patients. Therefore, we can achieve more accurate and reliable treatments by acquiring precise insight into different aspects of precision medicine including genomics and tran-scriptomics. The aim of this paper is to address the role of genomics and transcriptomics in precision medicine.