The US is taking a "big step" toward personalized medicine, writes US President Barack Obama in an op-ed at the Boston Globe.
As GenomeWeb has reported, the National Institutes of Health has awarded some $55 million to build up and enroll 1 million volunteers into the Precision Medicine Initiative, which Obama first announced in his 2015 State of the Union address. NIH has also given grants to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, the Broad Institute and Verily Life Sciences to handle the data that will be generated by the project, and it has come to an interagency agreement with the Department of Veterans Affairs to encourage former service members to take part in the initiative.
"Such a large sample of health data will help us better understand why certain treatments work for some people but not others, or why seemingly fit people fall ill," Obama writes.
That, he notes, will enable treatments, such as for cancer, to be tailored to each patient's particular genetic quirks and circumstances. "We wouldn't buy a pair of glasses that doesn't match our eyesight, and though plenty of people break their arms, everyone gets fitted for their own cast," he adds. "Our health care should be customized for us."