Personalized medicine, which targets individualized treatment and care based on personal and genetic variations, is hot. Several Big Pharma players continue to invest in this emerging field as evidenced by Roche’s $5.7-billion bid last week for Illumina, a provider of gene-sequencing tools and related analytics. Look out for whole genome sequencing - some folks idea of the Holy Grail in enabling personalized medicine.
PharmTech Talk » Roche Makes Bid to Advance Position in Personalized Medicine.
Roche, perhaps, more than any other pharmaceutical company, is banking heavily on the combination of diagnostics and drug development to drive pharmaceutical innovation. Roche is uniquely positioned in that regard as it is ONE of the leading diagnostics and pharmaceutical companies. Roche has 6 personalized NMEs and companion diagnostics in its commercial or late-stage pipeline. These include Zelboraf/BRAF companion for metastatic melanoma, and Tarceva/cobas EGR companion for non-small cell lung cancer.
Drug-companion diagnostics are a hot area in cancer treatment, and surely are ushering in a new era of personalized medicine.
Posted by Bruce Lehr Jan 30th 2012.
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