Precision Medicine News Round-up for March 2021

Genomic profiling is seen as a game-changer in Medicine. Despite issues of interoperability of electronic health records with other information relevant to clinicians, the last few years have seen some useful products that push the boundaries towards more personalisation of therapies. Meditech's latest solution called Expanse Genomics is one such promising advancement of the month that attempts to provide linkages from genetic data of patients to their drug metabolism, disease predisposition and other phenotypic characteristics.

A long-ignored aspect of healthcare that has become an integral angle to address in pursuit of advancing precision medicine is that of Real World Evidence. In a promising development, this important area is getting a limited boost (coverage: rare diseases, chronic diseases, cancer) through the integration of RW data provisioning infrastructure with advanced analysis capabilities - in the form of a partnership announcement between Pulse Infoframe and Quinten Health.

On population-level application of precision medicine, scaling issues are of primary concern. With the launch of the Population Precision Health Initiative, Ariadne Labs in partnership with Genomes2people research program, we may in course see new tools being developed to be incorporated into primary care that may start to address some of those challenges. The coverage in terms of problem-solving of this initiative will be broad-spectrum.

Abnormally thick heart muscles making pumping blood difficult is the main symptom of Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy. Following a publication last month of a new and innovative approach to studying protein-protein interactions incorporating patient-specific information being pursued at the Brigham and Young Women's hospital and Harvard Medical School, good news in the form of a $106 million Series C investment in Tenaya Therapeutics will give an additional boost to the pursuit of a novel gene therapy for the disease condition.

Commercialising precision medicine is difficult because of gaps in research, insufficient testing of technologies and limited understanding of potential outcomes. A determined attempt to take on these challenges could be expected from this further commitment from Hitachi and Sophia Genetics through their long term collaboration deal, following Hitachi's $110 million investment in the digital technology company last year.