http://www.mdpi.com/journal/jpm Latest open access articles published in J. Pers. Med. at http://www.mdpi.com/journal/jpm http://www.mdpi.com/2075-4426/2/2/50 Infectious disease management essentially consists in identifying the microbial cause(s) of an infection, initiating if necessary antimicrobial therapy against microbes, and controlling host reactions to infection. In clinical microbiology, the turnaround time of the diagnostic cycle (>24 hours) often leads to unnecessary suffering and deaths; approaches to relieve this burden include rapid diagnostic procedures and more efficient transmission or interpretation of molecular microbiology results. Although rapid nucleic acid-based diagnostic testing has demonstrated that it can impact on the transmission of hospital-acquired infections, we believe that such life-saving procedures should be performed closer to the patient, in dedicated 24/7 laboratories of healthcare institutions, or ideally at point of care. While personalized medicine generally aims at interrogating the genomic information of a patient, drug metabolism polymorphisms, for example, to guide drug choice and dosage, personalized medicine concepts are applicable in infectious diseases for the (rapid) identification of a disease-causing microbe and determination of its antimicrobial resistance profile, to guide an appropriate antimicrobial treatment for the proper management of the patient. The implementation of point-of-care testing for infectious diseases will require acceptance by medical authorities, new technological and communication platforms, as well as reimbursement practices such that time- and life-saving procedures become available to the largest number of patients. http://www.mdpi.com/2075-4426/2/2/50 Wed, 02 May 2012 00:00:00 CEST Journal of Personalized Medicine 2012-05-02 2 2 Review 50 70 2075-4426 Infectious Disease Management through Point-of-Care Personalized Medicine Molecular Diagnostic Technologies 2012-05-02 doi: 10.3390/jpm2020050 Luc Bissonnette Michel G. Bergeron http://www.mdpi.com/2075-4426/2/2/35 The incorporation of individualized molecular therapeutics into routine clinical practice for both non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and melanoma are amongst the most significant advances of the last decades in medical oncology. In NSCLC activating somatic mutations in exons encoding the tyrosine kinase domain of the Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR) gene have been found to be predictive of a response to treatment with tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI), erlotinib or gefitinib. More recently the EML4-ALK fusion gene which occurs in 3–5% of NSCLC has been found to predict sensitivity to crizotinib an inhibitor of the anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) receptor tyrosine kinase. Similarly in melanoma, 50% of cases have BRAF mutations in exon 15 mostly V600E and these cases are sensitive to the BRAF inhibitors vemurafenib or dabrafenib. In a Phase III study of advanced melanoma cases with this mutation vemurafenib improved survival from 64% to 84% at 6 months, when compared with dacarbazine. In both NSCLC and melanoma clinical benefit is not obtained in patients without these genomic changes, and moreover in the case of vemurafenib the therapy may theoretically induce proliferation of cases of melanoma without BRAF mutations. An emerging clinical challenge is that of acquired resistance after initial responses to targeted therapeutics. Resistance to the TKI’s in NSCLC is most frequently due to acquisition of secondary mutations within the tyrosine kinase of the EGFR or alternatively activation of alternative tyrosine kinases such as C-MET. Mechanisms of drug resistance in melanoma to vemurafenib do not involve mutations in BRAF itself but are associated with a variety of molecular changes including RAF1 or COT gene over expression, activating mutations in RAS or increased activation of the receptor tyrosine kinase PDGFRβ. Importantly these data support introducing re-biopsy of tumors at progression to continue to personalize the choice of therapy throughout the patient’s disease course. http://www.mdpi.com/2075-4426/2/2/35 Tue, 10 Apr 2012 00:00:00 CEST Journal of Personalized Medicine 2012-04-10 2 2 Review 35 49 2075-4426 Molecular Therapeutic Advances in Personalized Therapy of Melanoma and Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer 2012-04-10 doi: 10.3390/jpm2020035 Fergal C. Kelleher Benjamin Solomon Grant A. McArthur http://www.mdpi.com/2075-4426/2/1/15 Oncology is one of the most important fields of personalized medicine as a majority of efforts in this field have recently centered on targeted cancer drug development. New tools are continuously being developed that promise to make cancer treatment more efficacious while causing fewer side effects. Like most industries, the biopharmaceutical industry is also following certain global trends and these are analyzed in this article. As academia and industry are mutually dependent on each other, researchers in the field should be aware of those trends and the immediate consequences for their research. It is important for the future of this field that there is a healthy relationship among all interested parties as the challenges of personalized medicine are becoming ever more complex. http://www.mdpi.com/2075-4426/2/1/15 Wed, 07 Mar 2012 00:00:00 CET Journal of Personalized Medicine 2012-03-07 2 1 Opinion 15 34 2075-4426 Trends in Personalized Therapies in Oncology: The (Venture) Capitalist’s Perspective 2012-03-07 doi: 10.3390/jpm2010015 Roman Fleck Daniel Bach http://www.mdpi.com/2075-4426/2/1/1 Cancer is one of the leading causes of death in the United States, and more than 1.5 million new cases and more than 0.5 million deaths were reported during 2010 in the United States alone. Following completion of the sequencing of the human genome, substantial progress has been made in characterizing the human epigenome, proteome, and metabolome; a better understanding of pharmacogenomics has been developed, and the potential for customizing health care for the individual has grown tremendously. Recently, personalized medicine has mainly involved the systematic use of genetic or other information about an individual patient to select or optimize that patient’s preventative and therapeutic care. Molecular profiling in healthy and cancer patient samples may allow for a greater degree of personalized medicine than is currently available. Information about a patient’s proteinaceous, genetic, and metabolic profile could be used to tailor medical care to that individual’s needs. A key attribute of this medical model is the development of companion diagnostics, whereby molecular assays that measure levels of proteins, genes, or specific mutations are used to provide a specific therapy for an individual’s condition by stratifying disease status, selecting the proper medication, and tailoring dosages to that patient’s specific needs. Additionally, such methods can be used to assess a patient’s risk factors for a number of conditions and to tailor individual preventative treatments. Recent advances, challenges, and future perspectives of personalized medicine in cancer are discussed. http://www.mdpi.com/2075-4426/2/1/1 Mon, 30 Jan 2012 00:00:00 CET Journal of Personalized Medicine 2012-01-30 2 1 Review 1 14 2075-4426 Personalized Medicine and Cancer 2012-01-30 doi: 10.3390/jpm2010001 Mukesh Verma http://www.mdpi.com/2075-4426/1/1/5 Nowadays the adjustment of medication for each patient is at the center of health strategy. Children can be considered as specific targets with their own specificities. In the oral route field some examples of drugs especially adapted to children can be found. Design is introduced in drug formulation to offer a better choice of products and now, children can be considered as partners in their own treatment. Enhanced comprehension of children's requirements can also lead to creation of drugs that improve compliance. http://www.mdpi.com/2075-4426/1/1/5 Tue, 06 Dec 2011 00:00:00 CET Journal of Personalized Medicine 2011-12-06 1 1 Communication 5 16 2075-4426 Developing Drugs for Children and the Adjustment of Medication—Is It a New Challenge or an Adaptation of Past Ideas? 2011-12-06 doi: 10.3390/jpm1010005 Pascale Gauthier Jean-Michel Cardot http://www.mdpi.com/2075-4426/1/1/1 A new vision of personalized medicine or personalized healthcare has evolved as a consequence of remarkable recent advances in technologies that allow to look at individual variation across the entire human genome and to identify personal risk factors behind many diseases and responses to therapy. These advances have greatly increased our understanding of how interactions between the entire genome and nongenomic factors result in health and disease and in therapeutic response. The challenge is now to translate this knowledge into benefits for the individual patient. I expect the Journal of Personalized Medicine to become the premier venue for the rapid and freely accessible publication of high quality manuscripts dealing with this vision for scientists around the world. http://www.mdpi.com/2075-4426/1/1/1 Mon, 28 Mar 2011 00:00:00 CEST Journal of Personalized Medicine 2011-03-28 1 1 Editorial 1 4 2075-4426 Welcome to the Journal of Personalized Medicine: A New Open-Access Platform for Research on Optimal Individual Healthcare 2011-03-28 doi: 10.3390/jpm1010001 Urs A. Meyer