2023 Annual Personalized Medicine Conference

Introducing the 2023 Annual Personalized Medicine Conference

After the first sequencing of a human genome in 2003, officials from the U.S. National Institutes of Health introduced personalized medicine as a “newly created discipline” that promised to “make a profound difference to the health and well-being of all the people of this world.”

For two decades, researchers and industry leaders in health and medicine have vigorously pursued this vision, driving more than 100,000 molecular tests and 300 personalized medicines to the market. As The Economist put it in a story published on April 13, 2023, “no part of biology is untouched by the consequences of the Human Genome Project” that was completed in 2003.

But the findings of a Personalized Medicine Coalition/Diaceutics analysis published in 2022 revealed a growing gap between what is possible and what is practiced in modern medicine. In a paper that has since become one of the most-read articles in JCO Precision Oncology, PMC’s research showed that due to the complexities involved in genetic and genomic testing and genetically based prescribing, personalized medicines reached only 36 percent of the 38,068 non-small cell lung cancer patients who were included in the study cohort. Op-eds about the study in The Washington Post and in The Boston Globe’s health care affiliate, STAT, have further raised the profile of its findings among public audiences.

Thus, this year’s 20th anniversary of the completion of the Human Genome Project leaves scientists, business leaders, patients, and policymakers with two sets of questions about the rapid pace of progress in personalized medicine. First, we must ask ourselves how we can continue to accelerate investment in research and development to drive safer, more effective, and more innovative diagnostics and therapies to the market. And second, we must ask ourselves how we can put in place an improved paradigm that brings the benefits of personalized medicine to all patients.

PMC’s 2023 Annual Personalized Medicine Conference is designed to answer those questions. Those who attend the conference and encourage their institutions to sponsor it will help provide the Coalition with the resources it needs to expand the scope of its nonprofit educational, advocacy, and evidence development programs that promise to put health systems in a better position to deliver personalized medicine to more patients in need.

You can view the agenda here and a list of the institutions supporting the Coalition’s work on the conference here.