Imagine a world in which most of the treatments offered by doctors work flawlessly because they can order lab tests that somewhat accurately forecast which therapies will be effective. This is called
personalized medicine, and it is not quite here yet, but it is certainly on the way.
Today at the University of California San Francisco Conference Center, hundreds of key players in
the biotech industry gathered to discuss their vision for the near future. I attended the talks and spoke to some of the panelists.
The meeting began with a welcome from Caroline Kovac, managing director of Burrill and Company, a large investment and media firm. My favorite part: she showed a graph of how
frequently two industry buzzwords popped up in the news. According to Google, both have been on the rise.
Kovac was followed by her boss, Steven Burrill, leader of the company that bears his name. He gave
a passionate PowerPoint presentation that focused heavily on the bright financial prospects of the biotech industry.
His optimistic overview was followed by three intense discussions. Doctors, academics, a regulatory
official, and several chief executive officers weighed in on the obstacles that stand before their
common dream. Almost everyone seemed to be on the same page. In short:
Early medical testing and treatment could save patients and healthcare providers a ton of money, but
nobody wants to pay for unproven and often expensive new lab work. FDA approval is not required for laboratory tests, but it is an indicator that products are actually beneficial to doctors and patients.
There is a severe lack of communication between the companies that design personalized medicine
products and the companies that are reluctant to pay for them. Brad Margus, Executive Vice
Chairman ofPerlegen Sciences received a round of applause for his suggestion that the payors
make a list of the top ten products (biomarker tests) that they would support.
Biomarkers, the genes, proteins, and other things that personalized medicine products measure, can
initially appear to be strong signposts that forecast how a disease or treatment will work out, but
many of the sophisticated scientific indicators prove worthless to doctors. Several of the panelists referred to
markers that are truly useful and easy to identify as "low-hanging fruit", which seem to be rare commodities in the real world.
Cancer genetics is the most active arena for new products. Franklyn Prendergast, director of the Center for Individualized Medicine Research at the Mayo Clinic called it "the posterchild of personalized medicine." Pioneering companies like
Genomic Health are steadily focused on that market.
I will follow up with several detailed posts once the meeting has ended tomorrow. In the meantime, what would you like to know about personalized medicine?
