The Taiwan Precision Medicine Initiative (TPMI) aims to improve medication accuracy, to predict disease risk (such as cancers) and to identify risk factors for rare diseases.  Participation of this program is free.  As of the end of June, half million people have already signed up for this program, making TPMI the world’s number 1 precision medicine program in terms of the number of participants. Dr Kwok Pui-Yan, the Principal Investigator of TPMI, expressed that this program aims to help the people in Taiwan to understand their genetic constitutions.  Afterwards, the service could be expanded to help all Chinese people in the world.   TPMI has set a target to make the total number of participants to reach 1 million in 2023.

TPMI is also working to improve the precision medicine genotyping chip.  According to the TPMI’s research team, participants will be able to obtain the analyses of 10 different disease-susceptibility genes and learn about their risk of diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disorder, etc.  An APP will be launched in March 2023 to provide participants with the access to their assessment results and follow-up medical advice.

Health status is associated with a combination of genetic, lifestyle, and environmental factors.   TPMI is a collaborative project between the Academia Sinica and 33 hospitals in Taiwan.  The research team extracts DNA from the participants’ blood and then apply the lab-on-chip technology to identify the genotype and create the genetic profile.  The results can be used to predict the risk of diseases.  Dr Wu Ming-Shiang, the Superintendent of the NTUH, described TPMI as “scientific fortune-telling”. 

Dr Chu Nei-Min, the Vice Superintendent of the Koo Foundation Sun Yat-Sen Cancer Center, expressed that many cancer patients in Taiwan paid over NT$100,000 to foreign labs for the test of next-generation gene sequencing.  However, it is difficult for them to decipher the results because those foreign labs do not have sufficient data on Taiwanese.  TPMI will create a databank specifically for the people in Taiwan.  These data can be used to interpret the gene sequencing results and then serve as the basis for precision medicine.  This will reduce the overall treatment cost.

【2022-08-19 / Liberty Times】