REPO-TRIAL Coordinator Prof. Harald H.H.W. Schmidt talked about “Symptom- to mechanism-based concepts in medical research, practice and teaching” at the forum ‘Science & Health’ in Fürstenfeldbruck, Germany.
Existing drugs fail to provide benefit for most patients. The efficacy of drug discovery is in a constant decline. This poor translational success of biomedical research is due to false incentives, lack of quality/reproducibility and publication bias. The most important reason, however, is our current concept of disease, i.e. mostly by organ or symptom, not by a mechanism. Systems Medicine will lead to a mechanism-based redefinition of disease, precision diagnosis, and precision therapy – eliminating the need for drug discovery, and completely reorganizing how we teach, train and practice medicine.
