ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses precision medicine, with its goal of delivering the “right medicine” to the “right patients”. Precision medicine is propelled by the rapid advance of computer and biotechnology, chief of them is the development of next generation of genomic sequencing. Although there are substantial contributions of genomic sequencing to more targeted cancer treatments, it is now clear that genomic data alone may not be sufficient to achieve the mission precision medicine seeks and that proteomic and functional assays may be a better pathway to obtain a more precise treatment option, at least in certain cancer cases. Recently, immunotherapy has risen to a top approach to some cancer treatment. Precision medicine is also actively engaged in making better and more precise human vaccine design, aiming to deliver superior outcomes for immunization and for therapeutics in autoimmune diseases, inflammatory diseases, and cancers. Furthermore, AI is playing an important role in areas of precision medicine. In the future, precision, as applied to medicine, will take on more roles in disease prevention. Nevertheless, several major challenges need to be overcome if the goals of precision medicine are to be fulfilled.
