Precision Medicine News Round-up for April 2021

Congenital blindness is a set of conditions that includes refractive errors, cataract and size and colour abnormalities of various parts of the eyes that, left undetected in childhood, could lead to partial or full blindness of the individual in adulthood. While an effective gene therapy existed for some years now, research carried out at the Scheie Eye Institute, University of Pennsylvania, has delivered a method to deliver normalising versions of the gene involved, GUCY2D, to the retina of patients, improving its ability to convert light into electrochemical signals. The method is reported to have shown satisfactory levels of safety and efficacy, in early testing.

PanCAN, an organisation leading the creation of cures to comprehensively fight pancreatic cancer, has launched a clinical trial service called Precision Promise, to accelerate the understanding of tumour characteristics in patients and for reserachers to collaborate in inventing advanced treatments. A novel study at Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego has been initiated with the aim of using this scheme to test precision medicine innovations in solving one of the most difficult problem areas in cancer research.

In April was kicked off the second phase of Singapore’s 10-year National Precision Medicine (NPM) Strategy implementation. In the next four years, this programme, run by a new organisation PRECISE – Precision Health Research , Singapore - is expected to generate a number of key insights on the genetics of Singapore’s population, besides comprehensively introducing precision medicine into the country’s clinics and supporting the growth of healthcare and biotech industries within.

The Chinese precision medicine market gets a boost through the extension of a working partnership between Cambridge, UK-based Abcam, a leading producer and seller of biotechnology products such as antibodies, and MEDx, a companion diagnostics company based in Shanghai. The partnership will help develop high- quality antibodies for target genetic profiles that MEDx can include as part of their in vitro diagnostic kits.

In the field of education, the Gulf Medical University based in Dubai has launched a dual degree Ph.D. programme in Precision Medicine, with the aim of producing high-quality international researchers out of health professionals. The GMU joins the University of Edinburgh, the University of Glasgow, Tsinghua University, University of Minnesota and the Hamad Bin Khalifa University as one of the first set of institutions to start offering a comprehensive Ph.D. programme in the subject.