Big Pharma's Got One Toe In, At Least

At VentureBeat, David Hamilton points to news reported in the New York Times of the establishment of the International Serious Adverse Events Consortium. The consortium consists of seven big pharma companies, each of which will contribute funds to research into developing genetic tests to determine which patients are at risk from dangerous drug side effects. According to Hamilton, it’s good that “one of the first major industry-wide personalized medicine efforts should focus specifically on rare side effects, since it is exactly these sorts of safety problems that pose the biggest threat to the blockbuster-drug model in the first place.” However, he’s not sure if this means that big pharma is ready to buy into personalized medicine wholesale.