Discussion about personalised medicine

Personalised medicine explores the fundamentals in order to develop more precise diagnoses and individual therapies for the treatment of diseases. Personalised medicine is based on new findings in biomedicine and advances in information technology, and is an interdisciplinary partnership between medicine, science and engineering. Switzerland and ETH Zurich are well positioned internationally in this field of research.

For researchers at ETH Zurich, it provides an excellent opportunity to develop new concepts of prevention, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation in collaboration with clinical researchers. “Today, we have the opportunity to combine our biological knowledge base with medical knowledge for the benefit of the patient,” explains Rudolf Aebersold, Head of the Department of Biology, in the April issue of the ETH community magazine “life”. In May 2016, the Faculty of Medicine of the Lund University has awarded the honorary doctorate to him.

The organisation of data

Action is needed in the organisation of data; i.e. the collection and processing of patient information, biological databases (biobanks) and omics data (study of the building blocks of life and life processes using genomics, proteomics, etc.). The biggest challenges are expected to arise in the uniform collection of clinical data.

The external pageSwiss national support initiative Personalised Medicinecall_made presented in the current issue of “external pageSERI Newscall_made, May 16” addresses this and also various related topics, such as data security, data integrity, regulation, data archiving and data protection as well as confidentiality and ethical aspects (e.g. personal rights, data protection and procedures concerning those at risk of disease).

Public event at ETH Zurich

The public event of the Latsis Symposium 2016 at ETH Zurich on 29 June 2016 offers the chance to discuss the opportunities and risks of personalised medicine directly with researchers from ETH and the University of Zurich. The event is organised by the Personalised Medicine centre of competence formed by the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich (external pageCC-PMcall_made) and the IT’IS Foundation. All ETH members are invited.