Investigación y Desarrollo

Asthma: personalized and precision medicine

Giorgio W. Canonicaa,b, Matteo Ferrandoc, Ilaria Baiardinic,Giorgio W. Canonicaa,b, Matteo Ferrandoc, Ilaria Baiardinic,Francesca Puggionib, Francesca Raccab, Giovanni Passalacquac,and Enrico Hefflera,b

INTRODUCTION

Personalization of management and treatment ofeach patient has been the physician goal since Hippocrates.In the last century, progression of researchand industry leaded to great achievements, such asthe discovery of molecules able to treat a relevantproportion of patients with a certain disease. Inthat context, we lived the era of the ‘blockbusters’drugs [1].What was already evident at that time was thefollowing: a need for generic drugs, whose intent isto cover more patients in the developed countriesand to extend the treatment to underdevelopedcountries; a decrease of the so-called ‘blockbusterapproach’ while developing a ‘phenotype driventreatment’; and finally, considering the burden oftreatment with branded biologics, we also envisagedthe possible forthcoming of biosimilars in asthmaand allergic diseases.Nowadays, mainly because of the new biologictherapies, ‘Personalized Medicine’ and ‘PrecisionMedicine’ are commonly used as terms to indicatea more individualized approach to single patienttreatment