Last month, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard University unveiled VirScan, a diagnostic blood test that reveals more than 1000 different strains of viruses that are currently or which have previously afflicted individual patients. Given that VirScan costs about the same as traditional ELISA assays which only detect a limited number of pathogens one-at-a-time, this is a tremendous leap forward toward personalized medicine. Data gleaned from snapshots of patients’ past viral infections can give doctors clues about patients’ present health, and — perhaps — glimpses into the future.
Read MoreUp at 5AM: The 5AM Solutions Blog
Liquid Biopsies: The “Active Surveillance” of Diseases in Real Time
Posted on Tue, Jul 21, 2015 @ 02:30 PM
Tags: cancer, personalized medicine
My last post talked about off-label use of drugs, which is one way that patients can get access to drugs that are not officially approved for their condition. There’s another way this can happen, and it’s called compassionate use.
Read MoreTags: clinical trials, map of biomedicine, compassionate use