Translational and Precision Medicine

Objectives

Translational Medicine is defined as scientific research that helps speed up the translation of scientific discovery into clinical practice and effective amelioration of human health and wellbeing. Thus, Translational Medicine is responsible for bridging the gap, exploring and converting, from basic research or population studies into clinical application, potentiating the available instruments of diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment of specific pathologies.

Precision medicine is an approach to treat and prevent pathologies that seeks to exploit effectiveness by taking into account individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle.

By the end of the course students must have acquired knowledge and competences regarding the entire process associated with Translational and Precise Medicine.

General characterization

Code

1091008

Credits

Responsible teacher

Prof.ª Doutora Helena Soares

Hours

Weekly - Available soon

Total - Available soon

Teaching language

English

Prerequisites

Bibliography

* Principles of Translational Science in Medicine. From Bench to Bedside. Edited by: Martin Wehling, Ruprecht-Karls-Universitat Heidelberg, Germany, 2010;

* Translational Medicine: The Future of Therapy? Edited by: James Mittra; Christopher-Paul Milne by Pan Stanford Publishing, 2013;

* Translational Medicine: Strategies and Statistics Methods. Dennis Comatos and Shein-Chung Chow (eds) 1st edition, CRC Press, 2008;

* EATRIS, a European initiative to boost translational biomedical research; Guus AMS van Dongen, Anton E Ussi3, Frank H de Man, Giovanni Migliaccio; Am J Nucl Med Mol Imaging 2013;

* Emerging applications of metabolomics in drug discovery and precision medicine. Wishart DS1,2,3. Nat Rev Drug Discov. 2016 Mar 11. doi: 10.1038/nrd.2016.32;

* Biobanking Comes of Age: The Transition to Biospecimen Science. Vaught J.Annu Rev Pharmacol Toxicol. 2016 Jan 6;56:211-28. doi: 10.1146/annurev-pharmtox-010715-103246;

* MEDICINE. Personalization in practice. Iyengar R1, Altman RB2, Troyanskya O3, FitzGerald GA4. Science. 2015 Oct 16;350(6258):282-3. doi: 10.1126/science.aad5204;

* The precision medicine initiative: a new national effort.Ashley EA. JAMA. 2015 Jun 2;313(21):2119-20. doi: 10.1001/jama.2015.3595;

* A new initiative on precision medicine. Collins FS, Varmus H. N Engl J Med. 2015 Feb 26;372(9):793-5. doi: 10.1056/NEJMp1500523.

* The paradox of precision medicine. Jonathan Kimmelman & Ian Tannock Nature Reviews Clinical Oncologyvolume 15, pages341342 (2018)

* Drug development in the era of precision medicine Sarah A. Dugger, Adam Platt & David B. Goldstein Nature Reviews Drug Discovery volume 17, pages 183196 (2018)
*Biomarkers as drug development tools: discovery, validation, qualification and use. Kraus VB. Nat Rev Rheumatol. 2018 Jun;14(6):354-362.

Teaching method

This course is based on swift theoretical introductions, designed to give context regarding the fields of knowledge to be explored, meant to be further detailed by the students themselves through the preparation and discussion.

These group discussions are to be complemented by the students critical analysis of scientific papers in Translational and Precision Medicine.

A multidisciplinary learning is paired with an effective mentoring approach, in which the students will be divided in working groups, with a tutor/group, accompanied by faculty/researcher members who will provide guidance and stimulate discussion. This will facilitate and promote critical thinking of the students Evaluation will include a final project in translational medicine evaluation (50% of the final grade), class participation of the student and the ability to argue (15%), to present and discuss scientific papers (15%), and success in applying acquired knowledge to translational research (20%).

Evaluation method

The evaluation is done through a final evaluation based on a project in Translational Medicine and / or Precision, which is worth 50% of the final grade, with the remainder obtained through the evaluation of student participation and discussion capacity (15%), presentation and discussion of scientific articles (15%), ability to apply knowledge acquired in Translational and Precision research (20%).

Subject matter

Under the umbrella of how sex and gender affect health, disease and biomedical research, the scope of this course will include:

1) Introduction to Translational and Precision Medicine;

1.1) Explore the intersection between fundamental and clinical research;

1.2) Identification of disease mechanisms;

1.3) Biomarkers and pharmacogenomics;

1.4) Designing translational medicine projects;

2) Impact of sex/gender in vaccine success and in immune, neurological and metabolic diseases;

3) Tales of Translational Medicine (Study Cases).

Programs

Programs where the course is taught:

NOVA Biomedical Research Master