Precision Medicine: The New Frontier in Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis

Abstract

Precision medicine is defined by the National Institute of Health's Precision Medicine Initiative Working Group as an approach to disease treatment that takes into account individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle. There has been increased interest in applying the concept of precision medicine to idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, in particular to search for genetic and molecular biomarker-based profiles (so called endotypes) that identify mechanistically distinct disease subgroups. The relevance of precision medicine to idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is yet to be established, but we believe that it holds great promise to provide targeted and highly effective therapies to patients. In this manuscript, we describe the field's nascent efforts in genetic/molecular endotype identification and how environmental and behavioral subgroups may also be relevant to disease management.

Keywords: biological markers; endotypes; idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis; precision medicine; stratified medicine.

Figure 1.

Precision medicine and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). The three categories of “genetics/molecular markers,” “environment,” and “behavior” constitute the foundational elements of potential precision medicine–based subgroups in IPF and are represented here by overlapping rectangles. The overlying circles represent selected precision medicine–based concepts influenced by the three foundational categories that may prove relevant to precision medicine–based care in IPF.