WASHINGTON (AP) President Barack Obama is calling for an investment to move away from one-size-fits-all-medicine, toward an approach that tailors treatment to your genes. <\/p>\n
The White House said Friday that Obama will ask Congress for $215 million for what he's calling a precision medicine initiative. The ambitious goal: Scientists will assemble databases of about a million volunteers to study their genetics and other factors such as their environments and the microbes that live in their bodies to learn how to individualize care. <\/p>\n
As Obama put it in his State of the Union address, he wants the U.S. \"to lead a new era of medicine, one that delivers the right treatment at the right time.\" <\/p>\n
Also called personalized medicine, this is a hot but challenging field in medical research. It's yielded some early results. <\/p>\n
For example, it's becoming more common for patients with certain cancers to undergo molecular testing in choosing which drug is their best match. People with a rare form of cystic fibrosis now can choose a drug designed specifically to target the genetic defect causing their illness. Some medical centers, such as the Mayo Clinic, have opened \"individualized medicine clinics.\" <\/p>\n
But only recently has the cost of genomic sequencing dropped enough, and the computer power of medicine increased, to make it possible for large-scale pursuit of the approach, said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, which will lead the initiative. <\/p>\n
The hope is to \"harness the power of science to find individualized health solutions,\" Collins said. <\/p>\n
In the short term, precision medicine holds the most promise for cancer because scientists already know a lot about the molecular signatures of different tumors, Collins said. <\/p>\n
Details of the initiative still are being worked out, but the NIH plans to use some large genomic studies already under way as well as new volunteers, he said. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Read the original:<\/p>\n
Obama proposes 'precision medicine' to end one-size-fits-all<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" WASHINGTON (AP) President Barack Obama is calling for an investment to move away from one-size-fits-all-medicine, toward an approach that tailors treatment to your genes. The White House said Friday that Obama will ask Congress for $215 million for what he's calling a precision medicine initiative. The ambitious goal: Scientists will assemble databases of about a million volunteers to study their genetics and other factors such as their environments and the microbes that live in their bodies to learn how to individualize care Continue reading