Personalized Medicine: How your Genome can improve Healthcare | Marilena Melas | TEDxColumbusWomen

With leading technology at our fingertips and new scientific discoveries every day, why is it that we still don’t have a cure for the diseases that affect so many? Personalized Genomic Medicine enables us to predict and detect a disease before it becomes life-threatening. In addition, it has transformed the way scientists are treating cancers and other severe genetic disorders, focusing on tailored precise therapeutic strategies for each patient based on their unique molecular and genomic makeup. It is about treating people in the sense of the individual rather than the collective. It gives us knowledge which, if used wisely, can lead to our well being; the ultimate goal for the Ancient Greeks known as the “Ef Zin”. Coming from Lefkada a beautiful island in Greece, Dr. Marilena Melas earned her doctoral degree in Cancer Biology and Genomics from USC Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles in May 2019. Currently, she is an ABMGG Clinical Laboratory Genetics and Genomics Fellow at the Steve and Cindy Rasmussen Institute for Genomic Medicine, at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus Ohio. As a passionate and perseverant scientist who loves to help people, Marilena works to inspire others to believe in the beauty of their dreams. Her future career goal is to become a director of a Clinical Medical Genetics lab focusing on the translation of genomic discoveries into clinical and therapeutic applications in the field of Personalized Cancer Genomics. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx