Personalized Medicine of Central Nervous
System Diseases and Disorders: Looking
Toward the Future
Miranda Mladinic ́Pejatovic ́and Srđan Anzić
Abstract In recent years, great effort has been made to reveal genetic bases and
molecular and cellular mechanisms involved in the pathology of various central
nervous system diseases and disorders, which represent the greatest disease burden
today. Discovering genetic variants crucial for the predisposition to cerebrovascu-
lar, neurodegenerative, or psychiatric diseases should allow prediction and preven-
tion of these largely incurable diseases. Identification of molecular and cellular
mechanisms involved in their pathogenesis should open up new opportunities for
the individual, mechanism-based, personalized treatments, which should reduce the
morbidity and mortality in the field. However, at this time, personalized approaches
in prediction, diagnosis, and treatment of the central nervous system diseases and
disorders are still quite far apart and require a major progress in understanding the
basic mechanisms involved in cell death, regeneration, and neuronal and glial
interactions in healthy and diseased brain and spinal cord.
1 Introduction
Personalized medicine, which has become considerably more apparent since the
boom of recombinant DNA and biotechnology in the last decades of the twentieth
century and with the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003, is based on
Associate Professor Miranda Mladinic ́Pejatovic ́, Ph.D., Head of Laboratory for Molecular
Neurobiology, Department of Biotechnology, University of Rijeka, Rijeka, Croatia.
Srđan Anzic ́, M.D., Ph.D., Head of Allergology, Pulmonology and Emergency Polyclinic,
Children’s Hospital Srebrnjak, Zagreb; External Lecturer, University of Rijeka, School of
Medicine, Rijeka, Croatia.
M.M. Pejatovic ́, Ph.D. (*)
Laboratory for Molecular Neurobiology, Department of Biotechnology, University of Rijeka,
Rijeka, Croatia
e-mail:[email protected]
S. Anzic ́, M.D., Ph.D.
Allergology, Pulmonology and Emergency Polyclinic, Children’s Hospital Srebrnjak, Zagreb,
Croatia
School of Medicine, University of Rijeka, Rijeka, Croatia
©Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
N. Bodiroga-Vukobrat et al. (eds.),Personalized Medicine,Europeanization and
Globalization 2, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-39349-0_12
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