The healthcare industry in the region is rapidly progressing towards personalised treatment and disease intervention, revolutionising the way care is delivered to patients. In specialised areas such as cancer care, this innovative paradigm shifts the focus from a one-size-fits-all approach to tailoring medical decisions and therapies to the specific needs of each individual patient.
Personalised medicine has infiltrated into the realm of breast cancer in a way that has now improved the prognostic outcome of patients both in the early stage setting and the metastatic setting, said Dr. Shaheenah Dawood, Consultant Medical Oncologist and Adjunct Clinical Professor at Mohammed bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences, during a media roundtable held earlier last month.
Precision medicine involves utilising advanced technologies and genomic analysis to identify specific genetic mutations, biomarkers, and molecular diagnostics that cause the development and spread of cancer. By understanding the individual molecular profile of a patient's tumour, precision medicine enables healthcare professionals to administer targeted therapies with higher success rates and minimise unnecessary treatments and potential side effects.
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“Each patient should have individualised therapeutic management based on the biology of their disease, acquired targets, and profiling of the tumours because knowing that genomic makeup of the patient’s tumour helps in individualising therapy and building a treatment plan for each patient both in the early stage setting as well as the metastatic setting, thus improving the prognostic outcomes of patients,” said Dr. Dawood, who is also the President of the UAE Cancer Congress.
She further adds that the UAE offers three types of tests for cancer diagnosis and personalised therapy. Tissue profiling of the tumour allows experts to determine the targets and administer effective treatment strategies. Another type of test is the liquid biopsy which involves analysing cancer cells in a patient’s blood sample, and the third type of test is the minimal residual disease detection test, used in cancer management to identify small amounts of cancer cells that may remain in a patient's body after treatment. While some of these tests are conducted within the UAE, others are sent overseas to approved agencies for comprehensive analysis.
As precision medicine continues to make its strides in cancer research, the impact of AI can also be strongly felt in the field and has proven to improve treatment outcomes by enhancing accuracy in diagnosis, allowing personalised treatment selection, accelerating drug discovery, supporting decision-making, and facilitating real-time monitoring.
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In the UAE, AI has been increasingly integrated into various aspects of oncology including diagnostics, radiology, and molecular profiling, and will soon be introduced into the clinical decision-making realm as well, says Dr. Dawood. AI software assists in detecting unknown primaries in patients subsequently providing accurate diagnosis. In radiology, AI also helps detect abnormalities in mammograms, ultrasounds, and MRIs, which could have possibly missed the human eye.
While technology has revolutionised the delivery of cancer treatment outcomes, the key to combat the spread of the disease continues to be early detection and screening. In the UAE, the government has implemented comprehensive screening programmes across healthcare facilities, encouraging early testing that could significantly contribute towards reducing the burden of the disease.
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