Alan Taylor raised $1.1 million to commercialise personalised medicine companion diagnostic research.

Personalised medicine: it is not only a global biotech buzz phrase but is revolutionising the way patients are treated for cancer.

Professor Mathew Vadas, executive director of the Centenary Institute medical research centre at Sydney University, says personalised medicine is creating excitement because it helps doctors to know whether patients will respond positively to a drug before it is administered.

The big deal with personal medicine is that no two people are alike and no two diseases are alike, Vadas says.

In cancer medicine, it means not having toxic drugs that you know will not help you. The selection of drugs to patients is genuinely exciting."

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The cutting-edge technology has had a personal impact on Vadas.

My mother was diagnosed with lung cancer at age almost 90 . . . and because of personalised medicine they found a drug specifically for that [type of cancer], so she was able to take the right drug with very little toxicity," he says. "Five years ago she'd either have taken something really toxic or be dead.

Vadas says the technology is changing the business model for the pharmaceutical industry.

Before, you made a drug and you had to give it to all 100 people and 30 people benefited, and you made 100 sales, he says.

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The next revolution in cancer treatment