Personalized Medicine - Concept, Promises, Success and Challenges

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​​January 7, 2019

9:15 to 17:30  ​| Edgar de Picciotto Family National Institute for Biotechnology in the Negev Building
(Bldg. 41) 

​Interdisciplinary workshop organized by the
Jacques Loeb Centre for the History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences
and The National Institute for Biotechnology in the Negev (NIBN)

This workshop, which will take place at ​Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the NIBN, will illuminate the idea, the current developments, and caveats of what is called "personalized medicine" or "precision medicine". Focusing on cancer research, we will highlight the motivation for, and historical development of, personalized medicine. We will compare its diagnosis and treatment methodology with that of experiment-based molecular medicine, and discuss its limitations including, e.g. the extremely high costs for a small group of patients and the prevalence of multi-gene diseases and drug interactions.

Among the topic:

• From molecular medicine to personalized medicine
• The scientific rationale and epistemology behind the concept
• Cases of success: diagnosis and treatment of single gene diseases
• Challenges to the concept through the existence of multiple mutations, and the requirement for 
  multimodality treatments (drug-drug interactions)
• Economic dimensions of cancer treatment and limitations of personalized medicine due to extremely
  high costs applied to a small group of patients
• Ethics of personalized medicine, e.g. storage of personal data

Organizers:

Jacques Loeb Centre: Prof. Ute Deichman, Director – jloebcentre@post.bgu.ac.il, +972-8-647-2258
NIBN: Dr. Osnat Ohne, CEO - nibn@bgu.ac.il, +972-8-647-7193

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