Shuji Ogino
Harvard Medical School, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
This lecture introduces the evolving paradigm of "Molecular Pathological Epidemiology (MPE)" (= Molecular Pathology + Epidemiology) (S Ogino et al. J Natl Cancer Inst 2010; S Ogino et al. Nat Rev Clin Oncol 2011; A Field et al. JAMA 2013; etc.) as simply as possible. Any given human disease represents fundamentally heterogeneous process, as implicated by the "Unique Disease Principle". MPE dissects complex interplay between environmental, dietary, lifestyle factors, molecular pathogenic alterations, and disease occurrence and progression. MPE is a logical next step of genome-wide association studies (GWAS), termed "GWAS-MPE Approach". MPE has proven itself to be a promising approach to identify biomarkers for precision medicine (A Chan et al. NEJM 2007; X Liao et al. NEJM 2012; R Nishihara et al. NEJM 2013, etc.). Recently, the pharmaco-MPE paradigm has been utilized to uncover unanticipated effects of medications on health and diseases, using large population-based MPE databases. It is increasingly possible to design MPE database worldwide using routine molecular testing data, as molecular pathology testing is becoming routine clinical practice. It is essential to build large-scale population-based databases including medication use, lifestyle factors, molecular pathology, and clinical outcome. Such databases can generate novel information on potential chemopreventive or therapeutic benefits of drugs, which can be further tested by experimental models and clinical trials. To expand opportunities and address challenges, the "International Molecular Pathological Epidemiology (MPE) Meeting Series" was established in 2013, and the Third International MPE Meeting will be held in Boston on May 12- 13, 2016. Because disease heterogeneity is a ubiquitous phenomenon, the MPE and pharmaco-MPE paradigms should become routine to advance biomedical and population health sciences in the 21st century, and move us towards personalized prevention and treatment.