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Approved Research

Molecular Diagnostics via Pre-symptomatic Analyses for realization of Personalized, Preventative and Precision Medicine

Principal Investigator: Dr Cheol Ho Kim
Approved Research ID: 72602
Approval date: March 31st 2022

Lay summary

The current healthcare system is not only ineffective and inefficient but also is too costly to be sustained. Therefore, the current healthcare system, which is illness-oriented, reactive, fragmented and opinion-based, needs to be transformed to provide a wellness-oriented, proactive, preventative continuum of care.

Molecular Diagnostics is an emerging scientific field to improve accuracy of diagnosis through early detection of diseases using molecular signals and pre-symptomatic analyses by detection of minute symptoms of diseases. Early detection of minute symptoms in consideration of individual's genetic and phenotypic variances as well as life style, socioeconomic, psychological characteristics of individual will help us realize the concept of the predictive and personalized healthcare.

The molecular diagnostics solution, referred to as "CybreDX" in short, enables a 'wellness-oriented preventative healthcare' by allowing healthcare providers to identify and detect the susceptibility to a disease or health risks well in advance -  even when the individual feels perfectly healthy without any external indications for any illness - to detect minute indications of irregularities or imbalance in the system at the biochemical and molecular level, and to apply early interventions  for potential health risks and prevent the illness well before the individual becomes ill.

For the wellness-oriented, proactive, and preventative continuum of treatment for various diseases, such as central nervous system diseases or cancer, CybreDX requires not only extensive amounts of data from electronic health records, but also heterogeneous data from diverse disciplines and domains, such as genetic information, biochemistry markers, physical activity data, and online questionnaires, including diet, lifestyle, socioeconomic, or psychological characteristics, which are listed in UK Biobank data description. The extensive and diverse datasets of UK Biobank will be beneficial to expand and develop advanced CybreDX for more sustainable, effective and efficient healthcare systems.