In his State of the Union address last month, President Obama announced the Precision Medicine Initiative, a bold new research effort to revolutionize how we improve health and treat disease.
According to a new report released last month by the trade group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the biopharmaceutical pipeline is innovative and robust, with a high percentage of potential first-in-class medicines (meaning a new treatment where nothing currently exists) targeting diseases with limited treatment options. In addition to identifying medicines in development for conditions and diseases such as septic shock, ovarian cancer, sickle cell disease, and Lou Gehrig’s disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), which haven’t had any new product approvals in the last ten years, the report offers positive news for the rare disease community: one third of the products currently in clinical development have a rare disease designation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was announced earlier this week. The prize was awarded to two scientists for their work on reprogramming mature cells to become pluripotent.
The prize of 10-million-Swedish-krona (US$1.5-million) was divided, one half jointly to Sir John B. Gurdon, age 79, at the Gurdon Institute, Cambridge, United Kingdom, and Shinya Yamanaka, age 50, at Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan and the Gladstone Institutes, San Francisco, California, USA, for the discovery that mature, specialized cells can be reprogrammed to become immature cells capable of developing into all tissues of the body.
Biomarker Bulletin is an occasionally recurring update of news focused on biomarkers aggregated at BiomarkerCommons.org. Biomarkers are physical, functional or biochemical indicators of normal physiological or disease processes. The individualization of disease management — personalized medicine — is dependent on developing biomarkers that promote specific clinical domains, including early detection, risk, diagnosis, prognosis and predicted response to therapy.
- Selventa Receives Patent for Method to Identify Biomarker Profiles
Selventa, a biomarker discovery company that enables personalized healthcare through the stratification of patients based on disease-driving mechanisms, recently announced a US patent that relates methods and techniques that facilitate discovery of biomarkers, thus aiding in the development of predictive and prognostic diagnostic tests for therapeutics targeting complex multi-factorial diseases.
- Biomarker Discovery: Moving Diagnostics to the Forefront of Medical Research
Increasing emphasis is being placed on biomarker discovery as the key to advancing personalized medicine.
- FDA Clears Critical Diagnostics Presage ST2 Assay for Patients with Heart Failure
Critical Diagnostics is a U.S.-based biomarker company focused on optimizing patient care in cardiovascular diseases, such as heart failure.
- SciClips Launches Cancer Biomarker Database
The success of personalized cancer therapeutics relies on the development of companion diagnostic assays that can identify the most appropriate cancer patient, tumor type and disease state. To address this need, SciClips, a Wisconsin-based open innovation platform company that enables scientists and researchers to collaborate and share research and ideas, recently launched a cancer (oncology) biomarker database.
- The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to Fund Biomarkers of Gut Function for Global Health
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is currently seeking letters of inquiry for the grant program Biomarkers of Gastrointestinal (Gut) Function and Health.
In September, GE and leading healthcare and financial partners launched a new healthymagination initiative focused on accelerating cancer innovation and improving care for 10 million cancer patients around the world by 2020 . The plan was announced in New York by GE’s CEO and Chairman Jeff Immelt to an audience of prominent cancer scientists and researchers, doctors, financial partners and employees of GE Healthcare. The company’s comprehensive initiative combines the strength of GE’s portfolio of integrated cancer technologies with collaboration between GE and new partners and data sources to help clinicians provide better, more personalized care.