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When the President of Navarre, María Chivite, inaugurated in November last year the first mass sequencing center in the Autonomous Community – the second public detainee in all of Spain – opened a whole range of possibilities in relation to the world of genomics applied to healthcare and, consequently, in the world of personalized medicine in the region.
Now, more than two months later, we know that Navarra has a plan to become a benchmark. And this plan means with the participation of the whole society.
The Minister of University, Innovation and Digital Transformation, Juan Cruz Cigudosa, announced during his participation in the conference “My genome, the key to personalized medicine”, that the regional government completes a draft of the Personalized Precision Medicine Strategy.
This plan, about which no details have been given yet, will be subject to public consultation and, as he explained, any citizen will have the opportunity to contribute for a month.
It is important to emphasize that any citizen can contribute to this strategy. Personalized medicine is probably the most democratic health challenge of the future. And centers like mass sequencing are key.
And that’s it Mass sequencing allows the analysis of a person’s entire genome in 24 hours and the identification of mutations causing inherited or genetic diseases (e.g., cystic fibrosis or various inherited cancers).
Considering that the genome of every human being is made up of 3,000 million elements (bases) that make it unique, the importance of both a center with these characteristics and a strategy to bet on personalized medicine is clear.
timely
On the day Cigudosa announced the imminent publication of this project, another adviser, the one for Economic and Business Development, Mikel Irujo, highlighted with precision “The importance of collaboration in preparing the text of the Comprehensive Strategy for Personalized Medicine “.
In his speech, he reiterated that “this It is an area that represents an opportunity to strengthen the national health ecosystem, with significant potential for job creation, based on public-private collaboration and from the perspective of economic and business development. This is included in the Navarra S3 Smart Specialization Strategy, to help improve the competitiveness and well-being of the territory. “
The event presented the intervention main characters called upon to be of vital importance for the development of this strategy. The aim of the conference was precisely to present, from the point of view of professionals and patients, the benefits that this type of medicine can bring to citizens.
Thus, for example, Marisa Saldaña, a relative of a patient from NAGEN1000 project. This project is an initiative led by the Navarrabiomed Biomedical Research Center, which aims to transfer the use of the most advanced technology for the analysis of the complete human genome to the public health network of Navarra.
To do this, study 1,000 genomes of patients and their relatives with rare diseases and some cancers from Navarra Health Service-Osasunbidea.
Saldaña stressed that with projects related to personalized medicine “knowledge of rare diseases is improved and new lines of research are open that will lead to important advances in the treatment of our relatives. “…” he remarks.
The director of the Genomic Medicine Unit of the Clinic of the University of Navarra, Ana Patiño, also present at this conference, underlined what the genomic sequencing for patients’ clinical management “must be adjusted and adapted to the needs of that patient and accompanied by appropriate genetic counseling “.
In this regard, he considered that The most critical thing to help patients is the interpretation of genomic data.
According to Patiño, “we are in a country and a community with very important public and private sequencing resources, but the most relevant is how to get the correct interpretation of the data be clinically useful to patients. “
In this regard, Gonzalo R. Ordóñez, director of personalized medicine and laboratories at Nasertic – a public technology services company – raised the gauntlet, stating that it has the technical capacity to sequence the human genomes in Navarredoes not mean that it is convenient to sequence all Navarrese patients, rather, the various applications of sequencing should be used in accordance with clinical guidelines and recommendations. “
Finally, Josune Hualde, a pediatrician at the hospital complex in Navarra and principal investigator in Navarrabiomed of the NAGEN PEDIATRICS project, pointed out “importance promotes research and deepens a better understanding of the genome. “
He stated that “advances in genomic medicine allowed the discovery of new uses such as the one proposed by the NAGEN PEDIATRICS project, which aims to use complete genomic sequencing for acute clinical situations of hospitalized girls and boys with suspected genetic disease, screening positive neonatal and oncological girls and boys ”.
Genetic disease, according to Hualde, “is very significant in pediatric age and its diagnosis is complex.” The opportunity offered by new advances in genomic medicine They are very encouraging and, from the clinician’s point of view, represent a real opportunity to improve the quality of life of these children.
In short, personalized medicine, yes or yes, it’s everyone’s business and hence the will of the Naval government to involve the whole of society when developing a strategy that could put the region at the forefront of this sector.