The Path to Personalized Medicine

Major investments in basic science have created an opportunity for significant progress in clinical medicine. Researchers have discovered hundreds of genes that harbor variations contributing to human illness, identified genetic variability in patients' responses to dozens of treatments, and begun to target the molecular causes of some diseases. In addition, scientists are developing and using diagnostic tests based on genetics or other molecular mechanisms to better predict patients' responses to targeted therapy. The challenge is to deliver the benefits of this work to patients. As the leaders of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Food and Drug Administration . . .