Until recently I kept hearing claims such as, “Vaping is so much better for you than smoking…” My response is “It’s just a matter of time before the data will let us know”. Turns out the data is starting to speak, and it doesn’t have a positive outlook on the matter. Vaping is really in its infancy, and research even more so. We are still discovering which additives are in which types of vaping cartridges. Let’s compare vaping to tobacco: the Cancer Council in Australia reports that tobacco has been grown in the Americas for nearly 8,000 years, and the first significant medical reports weren’t out until the 1950s and 1960s. Relatively speaking we are early to this arena. Fast forward to the present where we know cigarettes have over 4,000 chemicals, 70 of which are known carcinogens.

It is well known that the drug discovery and development process is lengthy, expensive and prone to failure. Starting from the selection of a novel target in discovery, through the multiple steps to regulatory approval, the overall probability of success is less than 1%.

One factor is that the majority of diseases are multifaceted, hence the challenge is identifying the most appropriate patient populations who will respond to specific interventions. A stratified approach has proven beneficial in a number of cancers and genetic diseases, and pharmaceutical companies have a strong interest in understanding how to find the sub-populations of patients to ensure the most appropriate therapies are tested in clinical trials, and applied in broader clinical use.

The ultimate aim of a stratified approach to medicine is to enable healthcare professionals to provide the “right treatment, for the right person, at the right dose, at the right time”; and there are many research initiatives (governmental, private, public) on-going to develop the appropriate knowledge and models.