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When the President of Navarre, María Chivite, inaugurated last November the first Mass Sequencing Center in the Foral Community – the second publicly owned 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 wants to explain with the participation of the whole society.
The Minister of University, Innovation and Digital Transformation, Juan Cruz Cigudosa, announced during his participation in the day ‘My genome, key to personalized medicine’, that the provincial government is finalizing a draft of the Precision Personalized Medicine Strategy.
This plan, of which no details have yet been given, will be submitted to public consultation and, as he explained, any citizen will have the opportunity to make their contributions for a month.
It is important to emphasize the fact that any citizen can contribute to this strategy. Personalized medicine is perhaps the most democratic health challenge of the future. And centers like those of mass sequencing are key.
And it is that mass sequencing makes it possible to analyze a person’s entire genome in 24 hours and identify mutations which cause hereditary or genetic diseases (e.g., cystic fibrosis or different hereditary cancers).
Given that the genome of every human being is made up of 3 billion elements (bases) that make it unique, The importance of having a center of this nature and a strategy aimed at betting on personalized medicine is clear.
opportunities
On the day that Cigudosa announced the imminent publication of this draft, another Minister, the Economic and Business Development, Mikel Irujo, highlighted precisely “The importance of collaboration in the elaboration of the text of the Integral Strategy of Personalized Medicine “.
In his speech, he reiterated that “this is a field that represents an opportunity to strengthen the Navarrese health ecosystem, with significant potential for job creation, on the basis of public-private collaboration and from the perspective of economic and business development. This is reflected in the S3 Smart Specialization Strategy of Navarre, in order to contribute to improving the competitiveness and well-being of the territory “.
The event featured the intervention of main actors called to be of vital importance for the development of this strategy. The aim of the day 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, participated Marisa Saldaña, relative of a patient of the NAGEN1000 project. this project is an initiative led by the biomedical research center Navarrabiomed, which aims to transfer the use of the most avant-garde technology of complete human genome analysis to the public health network of Navarre.
To do this, the study of 1,000 genomes of patients and their relatives with rare diseases and some types of cancer from the Navarrese Health Service-Osasunbidea.
Saldaña stressed that with projects related to Personalized Medicine “knowledge of rare diseases is improved and new lines of research are opening up that will lead to significant advances in the treatment of our relatives. ” NAGEN1000 has given us the explanation to the symptoms and problems that our child has, we know why it happens to him, to what these alterations are due. .. “, remarks.
The director of the Genomic Medicine Unit of the University of Navarra Clinic, Ana Patiño, also present at this conference, highlighted what genomic sequencing for the clinical management of patients “must be adjusted and adapted to the needs of this patient and accompanied by appropriate genetic counseling. “
In this regard, he has considered that “The most critical thing to help patients is the interpretation of genomic data.”
According to Patiño, “we are in a country and in a community with sequencing resources, public and private, very important, but the most relevant is how to get the data properly interpreted so that they are clinically useful to patients “.
In this sense, picked up the glove Gonzalo R. Ordóñez, director of Personalized Medicine and Laboratories in Nasertic -public company of technological services-, stating that the fact of having the technical capacity to sequence human genomes in Navarre “does not mean that it is convenient to sequence all Navarrese patients, rather, different sequencing applications should be used in accordance with clinical guidelines and recommendations. “
Finally, the pediatrician of the Hospital Complex of Navarra and principal investigator in Navarrabiomed of the NAGEN PEDIATRICS project, Josune Hualde, has underlined “The importance of to promote research and to deepen a better knowledge of the genome “.
He stated that “advances in genomic medicine have made it possible to discover new uses such as the one proposed through the NAGEN PEDIATRICS project, Which seeks the use of complete genomic sequencing for acute clinical situations of girls and boys admitted with suspected genetic disease, projection positive neonatal and oncological girls and boys “.
Genetic disease, Hualde said, “is very significant in pediatric age and its diagnosis is complex.” The opportunity offered by new advances in genomic medicine “They are very hopeful and, from the clinic’s point of view, it’s a real opportunity to improve the quality of life for these boys and girls.”
In short, personalized medicine, yes or yes, it’s everyone’s business and hence the will of the Navarrese government to involve the whole of society in drawing up a draft of a strategy that could place the region at the forefront of this sector.