Moving From Uncertainty to Certainty: Why Precision Medicine Offers Hope
Chantel Wicks was diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) nearly twenty years ago. Since then, finding the right treatment has largely been a process of trial and error.
Like many people living with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis, she has cycled through various treatment options, each one bringing a sense of hope alongside uncertainty.
"Some medications worked for a while, some did not work at all, and others came with side effects that were difficult to manage," she says.
Over time, Chantel learned that treatment journeys are rarely a straight path. Instead, patients and their healthcare teams must weigh the potential benefits of a treatment option against any risks, all while hoping it'll provide lasting relief.
Running Out of Options
Today, Chantel's on her last treatment option, meaning she's not sure what will happen next if her current medication stops working.
"Being on what feels like a 'last' treatment option changes everything," she says. "It is not just about whether the medication will work. It is about what happens if it does not."
Navigating this unknown has been overwhelming. Beyond managing symptoms and her day-to-day, the larger question of what her future may hold if there are no clear alternatives left constantly looms.
For many people living with Crohn's or colitis, this experience is all too familiar. While important advances in treatment options over the last twenty years have improved outcomes, finding the right therapy often requires experimenting, forcing patients to try different medications before discovering what works for them.
Why Personalized Treatment Matters
That is why the potential of more personalized treatments resonates so strongly with Chantel.
Known as precision medicine, it represents a future where treatment decisions are informed by a deeper understanding of a patient's unique disease, helping connect people to therapies that are more likely to work from the beginning.
"Precision medicine means moving away from guesswork," she says. "It means understanding a patient's disease at a deeper level and using that information to choose the treatment that is most likely to work for them from the start."
Rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all approach, precision medicine aims to deliver the right treatment at the right time for each individual patient—a potential gamechanger for people like Chantel navigating non-linear journeys.
"Instead of cycling through medications and losing time on treatments that may not work and could possibly cause long-term damage, we could get to the right therapy faster," she says. "That does not just improve outcomes medically. It also reduces the emotional toll of constantly starting over."
She also believes more personalized treatment approaches could provide something many patients desperately deserve: more certainty.
"It gives you back a sense of control," she says. "Knowing that your treatment plan is tailored to you changes how you live day to day."
The Potential of Precision Medicine
To Chantel, precision medicine is more than just a scientific advancement. Precision medicine has the potential to give people back years lost to uncertainty, empower them with greater confidence in their care, and help them imagine a future with fewer setbacks and unknowns.
"For those of us who have spent years navigating uncertainty," she says, "that kind of change would be life altering."