How to Integrate Personalized Medicine into Prevention? Recommendations from the Personalized Prevention of Chronic Diseases (PRECeDI) Consortium.

Boccia S1,2, Pastorino R3, Ricciardi W4,3, Ádány R5, Barnhoorn F6, Boffetta P7,8, Cornel MC9, De Vito C10, Gray M11, Jani A12, Lang M13, Roldan J14, Rosso A10, Sánchez JM14, Van Dujin CM15,16, Van El CG9, Villari P10, Zawati MH13.

Author information

1: Section of Hygiene, Institute of Public Health, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome, Italy, stefania.boccia@unicatt.it.
2: Department of Woman and Child Health and Public Health - Public Health Area, Fondazione Policlinico Universitario A. Gemelli IRCCS, Rome, Italy, stefania.boccia@unicatt.it.
3: Department of Woman and Child Health and Public Health - Public Health Area, Fondazione Policlinico Universitario A. Gemelli IRCCS, Rome, Italy.
4: Section of Hygiene, Institute of Public Health, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome, Italy.
5: Department of Preventive Medicine, Debrecen University, Debrecen, Hungary.
6: European Public Health Association, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
7: Tisch Cancer Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, USA.
8: Department of Medical and Surgical Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy.
9: Department of Clinical Genetics and Amsterdam Public Health Research Institute, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Medical Centers, location VUmc, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
10: Department of Public Health and Infectious Diseases, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy.
11: Better Value Health Care, Oxford, United Kingdom.
12: Value Based Healthcare Programme, Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
13: Centre of Genomics and Policy, McGill University Faculty of Medicine, Montreal, Québec, Canada.
14: Linkcare Health Services S.L., Barcelona, Spain.
15: Department of Epidemiology, Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
16: Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.

Abstract

Medical practitioners are increasingly adopting a personalized medicine (PM) approach involving individually tailored patient care. The Personalized Prevention of Chronic Diseases (PRECeDI) consortium project, funded within the Marie Skłodowska Curie Action (MSCA) Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE) scheme, had fostered collaboration on PM research and training with special emphasis on the prevention of chronic diseases. From 2014 to 2018, the PRECeDI consortium trained 50 staff members on personalized prevention of chronic diseases through training and research. The acquisition of skills from researchers came from dedicated secondments from academic and nonacademic institutions aimed at training on several research topics related to personalized prevention of cancer and cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases. In detail, 5 research domains were addressed: (1) identification and validation of biomarkers for the primary prevention of cardiovascular diseases, secondary prevention of Alzheimer disease, and tertiary prevention of head and neck cancer; (2) economic evaluation of genomic applications; (3) ethical-legal and policy issues surrounding PM; (4) sociotechnical analysis of the pros and cons of informing healthy individuals on their genome; and (5) identification of organizational models for the provision of predictive genetic testing. Based on the results of the research carried out by the PRECeDI consortium, in November 2018, a set of recommendations for policy makers, scientists, and industry has been issued, with the main goal to foster the integration of PM approaches in the field of chronic disease prevention.