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Global Translational Medicine                                       Game-changing drug response prediction



              PGA is designed to improve therapeutic efficacy among   and immunotherapy together, making it difficult to
            the increasingly prevalent patient non-responders. The key   accurately mirror real-world conditions for testing the
            to its effectiveness lies in the genetic signature of the patient,   efficacy of treatment plans. The first-ever patient-tailored
            which is meticulously generated to maximize the predictive   PGA approach can work with the complexity of more
            power of drug efficacy in real time, thereby increasing the   complicated combination therapy, with the hope to
            chances of successful therapeutic intervention. Unlike   improve the response rates of patients that are currently
            traditional biomarker testing for DNA mutation detection,   left out of targeted therapy due to the lack of actionable
            which only reflects tumor itself, the mRNA expression   mutations or become unresponsive to current treatments.
            signature is designed to represent both tumor and non-  Drug response prediction has undeniably transformed
            tumor microenvironment, maximizing the accuracy of   precision oncology, enabling tailored cancer care that
            drug efficacy prediction even without a biomarker test. 11  aligns with each patient’s unique genetic profile. This

              Having the PGA gene-to-drug technology is essential   advancement has paved the way for more effective and
            to treatment selection and decision-making as an extended   personalized treatment strategies, ultimately improving
            option to patients who are not responders and had   patient outcomes. The growing interest and demand of
            exhausted other treatment options. Necessity for such a   more effective and durable therapies have enabled quick
            technology could mean that the progressive disease is in   transition of drug response prediction tests from the bench
            place and that previous efforts to destroy the tumor have   to bedside. Despite advancements in precision therapies,
            been unsuccessful. In the end, if none of that works, we   many patients remain unresponsive due to the complex
            have PGA test which will actually allow clinicians to direct   nature of the human genome. Scientists are still in the
            the treatment strategy to other tumor targets and pathways.  early  stages  of decoding  genetic  data  and  translating  it
                                                               into actionable information. Therefore, there is a critical
            8. Conclusion and future perspectives              need for diagnostic technology that can leverage a

            The management of cancer has improved in recent years,   patient’s unique genetic data to make accurate therapeutic
            with targeted therapy and immunotherapy gradually   predictions for each individual non-responder.
            complementing chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Despite   The breakthrough PGA technology no longer focuses
            the promise of these precision treatments for treating   on a 60-degree angle between targeted therapy and the
            cancer, but a non-responsiveness case would catapult   patient responders dictated by the guidelines; instead,
            clinicians back into the cycle, figuring out other therapeutic   it constantly looks around with a 360° spectrum for
            alternatives. Approximately 70 – 80% of cancer patients   identifying not only disease-relevant DNA sequences but
            will be disqualified for or fail to respond to precision   also strategies to integrate liquid biopsy, gene expression,
            medicine, and designing a predictive tool of drug response   and drug response prediction, for use in the non-responder
            remains a significant unmet need in this population. Other   patients. The future will tell, but the low patient eligibility
            than doing imaging, performing a physical examination,   and poor response rates of precision medicine could serve
            and clinically monitoring the patient, there is no effective   for clinicians as a wake-up call for having alternative and
            companion tool to gauge drug efficacy in a particular   reliable drug response prediction tools. Indeed, it was a
            patient.                                           lack of both drug efficacy and patient benefit the medical
              Studies have proposed neural network deep learning,   community experienced that prompted the invention
            machine  learning  or  AI  training  models  as  potential   of the PGA technology. Although biomarker tests offer
            predictors of drug response. However, none of these   unprecedented capabilities, they ultimately qualify
            in silico attempts have been clinically tested. There is a huge   the minority of patients for precision medicine, while
            realistic gap between the availability and the applicability   excluding the majority. Precision medicine can no longer
            of these models. On the contrary, the transformative PGA   solely count on superiority in the field of biomarker testing,
            test  takes  plasma  samples  from  patients,  extracts  and   and we should not solely focus on precision therapy, as any
            profiles cell-free mRNA, obtains patient-derived gene   other important, viable treatment options available are
            expression  signatures,  which  are  then  used  to  screen,   worth explored too. The broader the treatment options, the
            match, and catalog potentially effective drugs. Results   more it will benefit patients.
            from in vitro tests are combined with drug databases to   Although precision medicine appears to be promising
            power in silico predictive models, pinpointing the drugs to   in future, the success will be primarily determined by the
            which a specific patient will have good responses.  utilization of drug response prediction tools to capitalize
              Cancer treatments are complex, especially when   on the growth trends and meet demands from the non-
            they are combined, like using chemotherapeutic drugs   responder population.


            Volume 4 Issue 2 (2025)                         9                               doi: 10.36922/gtm.5091
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