BY JOHN SOTOS, M.D., STEVE ROSENBERG, AND MORTEN SOGAARD, PH.D., OPINION CONTRIBUTORS – 05/05/17 08:00 AM EDT
Precision medicine is the next step in the medical profession’s 2,500-year quest to individualize medical treatments — and one of the most significant. Often called the next “space race” because of the immense technological advances required to make it a reality, precision medicine allows clinicians to advance beyond the relatively coarse diagnostic and therapeutic categories of the present day, towards a more targeted, fine-grained system, based in part on genetics and molecularly defined phenotypes.
With about 20,000 genes to understand and analyze in the context of phenotypic and clinical information, the next few years will see a land-grab for the intellectual property that these global efforts will produce. It will be the 21st Century’s gold rush. But, rather than being contested in mines, it will be contested in research labs, clinics, and patent offices. And without robust federal investment, the United States will be in danger of being left behind. Full article at link below