What if one day, you had a prescription tailored especially to your condition? With the use of a “digital twin”, this may soon become possible. A digital twin is essentially a virtual model of your genetics and current health status generated from your data. This can be used to model your body’s reactions to random changes and how it would affect your condition. Using digital twin models, researchers from Harvard, Linköping University, and others have gained a better understanding of how gene expression affects inflammatory diseases such as Crohn’s disease and rheumatoid arthritis. These genes aren’t just an “on/off” switch. They’re more like dimmer switches with varying amounts of proteins produced based on how activated or inactivated they are. This also affects not just the joints, but many other organs in the body. With this knowledge, researchers can tailor the correct drug combinations for individual patients.
For those interested, here is the original article:
https://cell.com/cell-reports-medicine/retrieve/pii/S2666379123000484?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS2666379123000484%3Fshowall%3Dtrue
Interesting article. Thanks for sharing.