Current medical practice is determined by averaging drug responses across large cohorts of clinical trial patients ensuring that everyone will receive the same standard of care.  In contrast personalized medicine is the complete opposite and bases a patient’s treatment on their individual characteristics.  

A key attribute of personalized medicine is the development of the so-called companion diagnostics or Theranostics, whereby specific molecular tests are used to stratify disease status, select between different medications and provide a specific therapy for an individual’s disease. Until recently there were only a small number of companion diagnostic success stories such as testing for HIV resistance and herceptin.  However, recent data showing that KRAS mutation testing can clearly stratify colon cancer responders and non-responders after Vectibix treatment has sparked renewed interest in the companion diagnostic area once more. Once again the development of theranostics is now seen to be one of the most rapidly growing segments of the diagnostics industry.

At Permedx we have proven track record in theranostics development within the pharmaceutical industry and many of these assays are currently in the later stages of clinical validation.