Precision medicine: new opportunities and challenges for molecular epidemiology / 中华流行病学杂志

ABSTRACT

Since the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003 and the announcement of the Precision Medicine Initiative by U.S.President Barack Obama in January 2015,human beings have initially completed the "three steps" of "genomics to biology,genomics to health as well as genomics to society".As a new inter-discipline,the emergence and development of precision medicine have relied on the support and promotion from biological science,basic medicine,clinical medicine,epidemiology,statistics,sociology and information science,etc.Meanwhile,molecular epidemiology is considered to be the core power to promote precision medical as a cross discipline of epidemiology and molecular biology.This article is based on the characteristics and research progress of medicine and molecular epidemiology respectively,focusing on the contribution and significance of molecular epidemiology to precision medicine,and exploring the possible opportunities and challenges in the future.