Personalised Transfusion Medicine

Abstract

Preview
In recent years, personalised (or precision) medicine initiatives have burgeoned around the world. The underlying goal of these ambitious projects is to provide patients with the most effective therapy, one that is tailored specifically towards the unique genetics and biology of each patient. It could be argued that transfusion medicine has been matching donors and patients, i.e. transfusion recipients since the earliest days1 of this life-saving medical intervention. The emerging fields of omics technologies, specifically genomics, proteomics and metabolomics, currently provide transfusion medicine experts with a brand new toolset to redefine the pairing of donor and recipient "biologies", conveying a whole new meaning to the concept of Personalised Transfusion Medicine, the subject of this thematic issue. [ ... ]