Notes from the 2009 Harvard Business School Healthcare Conference (Part 2)
The next session I attended was the personalized medicine panel, which was new this year. The panelists spoke to a standing-room-only crowd in an HBS lecture hall. The panelists briefly explained what personalized medicine was, and emphasized its importance as technology began to deliver whole genome sequences for less and less money. The first human genome cost about $3 billion dollars to sequence. As of March 2008, that price had dropped to $60,000. More recently, SingularityHub predicted that whole genome sequencing would fall to $1,000 before the end of 2009.
So what are some of the consequences of a high volume of genetic data becoming rapidly available?
- Noubar Afeyan provided an overview of the current diagnostics market. One company recently did a deal with Humana to develop simple treatment response markers (non-predictive) — the kicker is that patient co-pays will depend on the values of the treatment response marker.
- Dr. Teresa DeLuca, Medco’s VP of Personalized Medicine, capably explained not only how personalized medicine can achieve improved outcomes in targeted patient populations, but also how the technology can reduce costs for payors. Payors may not be able to make a patient go into wellness program or enforce a patient’s compliance, but they will soon be more able to get the right patient the right drug at the right dose at the right time. Medco is working to create diagnostics reports for doctors that provide medication recommendations for patients.
- Mara Aspinall, president of Genzyme Genetics, emphasized the need to more deeply understand the pathways and MOA for the drugs we already have, and add the right diagnostics and pharmacoeconomic data to deliver a total value package for payors.
Curiously, Afeyan also mentioned current research into biomarkers that may predict response to anti-TNF medications such as Enbrel.
Later on, I also spoke with Wayne Rosenkrans, the panel moderator and the chairman of the Personalized Medicine Coalition, which works on evolving healthcare policy in this area. He agreed that the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act was a promising step forward, but insufficient protection for most patients. Case law will have to fill in the gaps left by the law, which is only months old.
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