Body Talk: Opportunities for personalised medicine

Like the EPM team I imagine most of you are currently looking forward to CPhI in Barcelona at the beginning of October. As always the event promises to be a hotspot of innovation and ideas as well as providing the perfect opportunity for networking, plus making and establishing fruitful business contacts.

It’s an exciting time in the pharmaceutical sector. In the UK the focus on personalised medicine has become increasingly evident over recent months, highlighted as NHS England recently explained the opportunities this area of life sciences offers for the patient at its recent expo. Using genetic sequencing to offer a more targeted approach to treatment not only makes sense for the patient but the pharma sector too providing potential for the growth and development of new products, tailored to an individual’s needs.

Where opportunities exist for the sector, they also exist for the market. This has been recognised by the organisers of CPhI who will be looking at personalised medicine as part of the Pre-Connect Congress. As we hear patient experiences where it can take years for a successful conventional drug to be found to treat an individual’s condition, the growth of personalised medicine is beyond exciting.

In a recent article in the FT Magazine, Brooke Masters outlined how: “Advocates of personalised medicine say these kinds of narrowly targeted drugs, tied to clear genetic or chemical markers, are the future. They argue that the current state of medicine, in which everyone is given the same drug and it works for some but not others, will soon be seen as barbarous”.

This field of medicine offers a range of benefits – firstly it allows genes at the crux of a disease to be identified leading to more effective and targeted treatment by providing the right drug at the right dose for each person.

Next month’s CPhI promises an extensive array of new products and services from the some of the world’s leading global pharmaceutical companies. It will be interesting to see how personalised medicine is starting to become part of the picture, not just in the UK but on a worldwide scale as well.