On March 17th  in Konstanz, over 80 participants discussed the newest developments in the growing field of personalized medicine with a special focus on IT.

One of the most interesting talks was given by Prof. Christof von Kalle, NCT Heidelberg. Especially in cancer research, individual treatments of patients will have a huge impact on the success of the therapy and decrease of bad side effects. Also other speakers from pharmaceutical companies (Nycomed, Roche) emphasized the needs in drug development to change the development from blockbusters to stratified medicine to personalized drugs. The data output, e.g. in sequencing for the genetic background, is increasing and also the link to other important information about pathways, phenotypes and environmental dispositions need to be established. Hence,  IT solutions for integrated data analysis and storage for diagnosis, treatment and therapy monitoring has to be established. For sure, this is nothing totally new. Anyhow, showing the complete workflow from diagnostics through drug development to treatment was very helpful for my understanding of many aspects in the process. The interdisciplinary cross linking of biotechnology, pharma and IT is an opportunity as well as an absolute must for the future of personalized medicine. I really got a deeper understanding how pharma companies are working and how long they need to change their way of working.

Next week I will join the 1st GATC Symposium on Next and Third Generation Sequencing
Kerstin